Jha and others accused the American authorities of placing the burden of the vaccination effort on overburdened states, delaying funds to establish an infrastructure and providing little guidance to states on how to prepare for vaccine administration.
“I have long feared that people in the White House and [US health officials] we just weren’t paying attention to it and in the past few weeks it has become very, very clear, ”said Jha, who first voiced his criticism on Twitter in an interview.
Planning for the critical “last mile” of the vaccine launch should have started months earlier, said Jha, “so that on the day the vaccine was authorized by the FDA, all nursing homes in America were ready to go with people in line to vaccinate.
He continued, “This is what a government that cares about protecting lives would have done.”
Instead, he said, the vaccination push is being alarmingly slow at a time when the deadly coronavirus is resurging across the country.
Federal officials projected that the United States would deliver 20 million doses of vaccines by the end of the year. But in their most recent update on Monday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that only 11.4 million doses of vaccines were sent to the states and 2.1 million people received the first injections into their treatment regimens. two doses.
“They promised too much, and now there is insufficient delivery,” said Dr. William Schaffner, professor of infectious diseases at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine in Nashville.
In Massachusetts, where officials initially said they expected to receive a quota of 300,000 doses by December 31, that number was reduced to 265,000 earlier this month, after they were told that the initial US projections were wrong. Baker government officials said on Tuesday that 257,750 doses had been shipped so far. On Monday, they said, the first shots were fired at 67,016 state residents.
Trump administration officials ignored the criticism.
Michael Pratt, spokesman for Operation Warp Speed, which coordinates the federal vaccination effort, attributed the deficiencies in part to delays in reporting doses administered. He said in a statement that the gap between the number of doses delivered and administered is expected at this point in the program.
Operation Warp Speed continues on its way to allocate 20 million doses for the first of the two necessary vaccinations by the end of the year, the statement said, “with the distribution of the 20 million first doses in the first week of January, as states place orders for them. “ He promised that the doses for everyone to receive the second injection would be “distributed a few weeks later”.
But the statement addressed distribution, not the next crucial step: inoculating people with the vaccine.
The stakes in the race to vaccinate Americans are increasing, as the CDC projected on Tuesday that the death toll from COVID-19 could rise to 400,000 on the day of the inauguration.
With federal authorities handing vaccination planning over to states, officials have been clamoring for funding to pay for programs. Massachusetts officials have not said how much the vaccination will cost, but are working to identify sources of revenue – including $ 88.9 million from the COVID-19 relief bill signed by President Trump on Sunday – to defray the costs.
Biden, speaking in Wilmington, Del., Promised that in his first 100 days in office, 100 million vaccines will be administered – a feat he said would require vaccination to occur at five or six times the current rate. To support this acceleration, Biden said, he will use the Defense Production Act to order the industry to produce vaccine supplies and personal protective equipment.
The president-elect moderated his ambitious tone with a warning that vaccination will still require a lot of time and effort. “This will be the biggest operational challenge we have ever faced as a nation,” he said.
Dismay over the slow launch, which quietly fermented among health leaders last week, appeared publicly on Monday night, when Jha logged on to Twitter to express her frustrations. His topic attracted thousands of likes and retweets – and resonated with public health experts in Massachusetts and beyond.
Other health leaders echoed Jha’s criticism on Tuesday, calling the federal response inadequate. They also questioned whether state health officials, without resources and overwhelmed by 10 months of fighting the pandemic, were up to the task of organizing the “last mile” for the final distribution of Pfizer and Moderna vaccines authorized for emergency use at the beginning Of this month.
“Speed is what matters,” said David Williams, president of the Health Business Group, a management consulting firm in Boston. “This must be D-Day now. But what is happening nationally is that it is being done in a bureaucratic way and not with the urgency that you would do in a civil defense or in a war exercise ”.
Williams cited data from the University of Oxford showing that Israel, with a population not much larger than Massachusetts, has already administered 5.68 doses per 100 people compared to the US total of 0.64 per 100.
“All states have sent their plans to the federal government, but we have yet to see a coherent national plan that explains how they will increase speed [of distribution]”Said Dr. Leana Wen, visiting professor of health policy and management at the Milken School of Public Health at George Washington University.
Wen said that, by his calculations, the country would need to vaccinate 3.5 million people a day to achieve 80% vaccination by the middle of next year, up from about 1 million a week so far.
“It is necessary to have a national strategy. It cannot be fragmented. You cannot spread responsibility and responsibility, ”said Wen.
In Massachusetts, implantation in some hospitals has been difficult, with some frontline employees complaining that colleagues who don’t treat patients with COVID-19 are jumping to the front of the line. At Mass General Brigham, the state’s largest hospital system, a computer crash caused a vaccine enrollment site to temporarily crash.
But the biggest setback in Massachusetts came when federal officials told the Baker government on Dec. 18 that Pfizer’s promised vaccine shipments would be reduced by 20% this month. Governor Charlie Baker said he was “frustrated” with the reduction in distribution, which could delay implementation by “a week or more”.
General Gustave Perna, the military leader of Operation Warp Speed, took responsibility for the confusion over appropriations for Massachusetts and other states, saying the week before Christmas that he gave incorrect guidelines because he did not have “a clear understanding” of the distribution process. vaccine.
For public health leaders, federal support that was so crucial to developing the vaccine and starting to distribute it has now fallen that it is time to administer the doses.
“A lot of money has been channeled, quite appropriately, for companies to develop the vaccine and test it, and to really speed up the delivery of vaccines,” said Schaffner. “But at that moment, federal assistance stopped. The hard work is just beginning: moving the vaccine from the vials to the arms. “
Dasia Moore can be contacted at [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter @daijmoore. Robert Weisman can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @GlobeRobW.