The winter storm that hit Texas and much of the U.S. also affected the coronavirus vaccination campaign, delaying shipments due to poor road conditions and forcing the closure of hundreds of vaccination sites across the country.
© Sergio Flores / For The Washington Post
People wait in line at a supermarket in Austin, TX, on Tuesday, February 16, 2021. A snowstorm over the weekend covered the roads of Texas with snow and ice and left many without power. Without adequate tools to remove it, many roads are still covered with snow and ice. (Sergio Flores for The Washington Post)
The dangerous climate is reducing deliveries from a FedEx facility in Memphis and a UPS facility in Louisville that serve as distribution centers for the southeast.
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“Due to the severe winter that is currently affecting a large part of the country, the US government is projecting widespread delays in the shipment and delivery of COVID-19 vaccines in the coming days,” Kristen Nordlund, spokeswoman for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, wrote in an email.
She did not detail which states and how many of the 11 million doses scheduled for delivery this week are affected.
But a number of locations announced delays, including canceled vaccination events on Tuesday in Alabama, Indiana, New Hampshire, South Carolina, Tennessee, the Chicago area and more. Missouri closed all large-scale vaccination sites until Friday. The supermarket chain Publix stopped scheduling appointments for photos in Florida, South Carolina and Georgia, citing shipping delays. Texas said its weekly vaccine quota would not begin until Wednesday.
“Nobody wants to put the vaccine at risk when trying to apply it under dangerous conditions,” said the Texas Department of Health Services noted Tuesday on a chart on Twitter.
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In some cases, residents who have obtained elusive vaccine appointments for themselves or their families are now at the beginning of their search.
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Austin resident Shana Gallagher, 26, was scheduled to receive her first dose on Monday in Waco, Texas, more than 100 miles from her home – the closest appointment she was able to find after long periods of time by clicking update online . But when she canceled her appointment due to time, she was forced to give up her second dose appointment as well, she said.
“I probably spent three hours cumulatively over many days and weeks, and finally got one. It will be more of that again, ”said Gallagher, who has autoimmune diseases that put her in a priority category.
She said the delay in receiving the vaccine could mean “life or death” for other people who have to go to work in person. “For me, it’s mostly frustrating,” added Gallagher. “But for thousands of people, it is much more than that.”
The latest round of climate-related vaccine delays highlights a fundamental vulnerability in the mass inoculation effort: both vaccines authorized in the United States need to be stored at ultracold temperatures, triggering a rush to use them in a few hours, when they cannot.
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Harris County officials, who include Houston, struggled to deploy 5,410 doses after the facility where they were stored lost power and the backup generator failed on Monday morning.
They distributed the vaccines to Rice University, several hospitals and the county prison for use on Monday, before the doses went bad. But the rush turned out to be unnecessary: county officials said the vaccine maker Moderna later assured county officials that unused vials could be returned to refrigerated storage without losing their effectiveness.
“No vaccine has been spoiled or wasted, so they are being administered or refrigerated,” said Rafael Lemaitre, a county spokesman.
Lemaitre said the county started collecting unused bottles on Tuesday and cannot say how many were used. Rice University confirmed that there were none left.
The school, which has not lost energy, sent an alert to its students offering less than 1,000 vaccines at an existing coronavirus test site for those who were already on campus. All were claimed in four hours.
“It happened quickly,” university spokesman Jeff Falk told The Washington Post. “And they took them in their arms, which is a good thing.”
Vaccine mishaps, shipping delays cause mishaps about second dose appointments
In addition to the obvious transportation problems, the winter storm interrupted other important aspects of vaccine distribution, from scheduling appointments to monitoring vaccine temperature.
Stephen Williams, Houston’s director of health, said the city has been unable to administer doses since Saturday and has already canceled clinics until Wednesday.
Internet interruptions related to the weather interfered with his team’s ability to remotely monitor refrigeration in clinics. This prompted police to accompany nurses to these locations on Monday to inspect refrigerators, Williams said. On Tuesday, city officials moved the doses to a central location with a backup generator to avoid monitoring multiple locations at the same time.
When sites reopen, possibly on Thursday or Friday, providers will prioritize people who are waiting for their second dose of the two-dose protocols. Williams said he and his team are discussing ways to increase capacity over the weekend at major vaccination sites to make up for lost time.
Indiana, which closed dozens of vaccination posts on Tuesday and Wednesday, warned residents that inclement weather is causing scheduling difficulties and asked for patience when calling 211 to reschedule appointments. Tennessee, however, told residents that your local health departments would contact them to reschedule, if necessary.
© Charlie Riedel / AP
Steam rises from the frozen Missouri River as the temperature fluctuates at -9 degrees Fahrenheit Tuesday, February 16, 2021 in Kansas City, Missouri. Missouri closed all large-scale vaccination sites until Friday. (AP Photo / Charlie Riedel)
Illinois avoided delays in vaccinations by preemptively requesting doses for its strategic stock, the state health department said in a press release on Tuesday. As a result, the state may continue to send doses to providers and “would not be subject to delays due to weather in other parts of the country”.
Ohio Governor Mike DeWine (R) said on Tuesday that shipments from vaccine manufacturers were delayed by a day or two, while the state was processing a two-hour delay in delivering 26 dose packs repacked.
Despite the harsh climate, he emphasized that many vaccine suppliers were meeting scheduled appointments and encouraged residents to check road conditions before venturing out – but not to assume that their hard-to-find vacancies were postponed.
This was a source of confusion for people across the country who were unsure whether their designated vaccination sites were still functioning and had difficulty contacting them by phone.
San Antonio resident Jessica Vidal, 60, and her partner were preparing to drive on icy roads to receive the dose on Monday afternoon, when she reconsidered, concerned about the dangerous driving conditions. They were not even sure whether their pharmacy was offering vaccines because information was not available online.
“And there was that possibility,” said Vidal. “What if we got there and there was no vaccine.”
The Biden government is monitoring the impact of the winter storm on vaccine distribution, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said on Tuesday, but she gave no details.
A mass vaccination clinic was opened with fanfare in Philadelphia before collapsing due to suspicion
Psaki announced that the weekly allocation of vaccines to states will increase to 13.5 million, an increase of 2.5 million in the dose, as supply remains far below demand. The latest increase, part of which comes from the government’s new approach to counting the sixth dose of Pfizer that can be withdrawn from bottles with a specialized syringe, marks an overall 57 percent increase in weekly supply since President Biden was sworn in. January 20, Psaki said. Much of this increase comes from the long-awaited expansion of manufacturing capacity.
The government is also supplying more vaccine directly to pharmacies, increasing the number of doses per week from 1 million to 2 million. This increase is part of a gradual expansion of the ability of Americans to apply for vaccination directly at known drugstores.
Tuesday’s announcement came five days after Biden revealed that his government had concluded a deal with two vaccine manufacturers for an additional 200 million doses by the end of July. The government, exercising options built on contracts negotiated last year, bought half of those doses from Pfizer and its partner BioNTech, and the other half from Moderna – vaccines authorized for emergency use in the United States.
This purchase is expected to make enough vaccine available in mid-summer to cover all adults in the United States.
The general public can expect vaccines until early June, Anthony S. Fauci, the country’s leading infectious disease specialist, told CNN on Tuesday. Fauci said the target is later than his previous April projection because Johnson & Johnson, whose single injection vaccine is due for authorization later this month, has fewer doses than he expected.
If released, doses in the millions of single digits of this vaccine will initially be available, according to federal officials familiar with the matter. Jeff Zients, the White House coronavirus coordinator, told governors on a phone call on Tuesday that the company would be able to scale production to meet its commitment to provide the United States with 100 million doses by the end of June.
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