The boxes containing the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine are ready to be shipped to the Pfizer Global Supply Kalamazoo factory on December 13, 2020 in Portage, Michigan.
Morry Gash | Getty Images
All shipments of doses of the Covid-19 vaccine that were delayed last week by the historic winter storm are expected to be delivered midweek, senior White House consultant for Covid-19 response Andy Slavitt said in Monday.
Slavitt said on Friday that delivery of about 6 million doses, representing about three days of shipments, was delayed by the storm.
“I reported on Friday that we were going to catch up on deliveries later this week,” Slavitt said on Monday at a Covid-19 White House press conference. “We now predict that all cumulative doses will be delivered in the middle of the week.”
He added that on Monday the federal government plans to deliver about 7 million doses of the vaccine, a combination of vaccines that have been delayed since last week and some that were scheduled to leave this week. He said the government’s ability to recover quickly from the storm was due to McKesson’s military and officials, whom the government hired to help manage the distribution and logistics of the vaccine launch.
“Seventy McKesson employees volunteered to work 1 hour shifts on Saturday night and Sunday morning to prepare shipments to meet the 11 am transit deadline,” he said, adding that UPS employees were also flexible to accommodate late deliveries.
Slavitt added that while the White House quickly anticipated the delay in delivering doses, it “will take time” for vaccination sites to update inoculations.
“We encourage vaccination sites to follow the same lead as those who are working long hours to monitor births, scheduling more appointments to vaccinate the anxious public as quickly as possible,” he said. Slavitt added that vaccination sites in some parts of the country that were particularly hard hit by the storm are still closed.
The pace of vaccination in Texas, which was shaken by the storm that left millions of people in the state without electricity, has been severely affected. Slavitt said the seven-day average of daily doses dropped 31% last week.