ANs frustration with the pace of Covid-19 vaccine deployment continues to grow, health officials in Colorado reported on Tuesday the first known US case of the Covid-19 variant discovered in the UK
The UK variant appears to be more transmissible than other variants of the virus seen so far, and has been detected in several countries around the world. The Colorado case, which is currently isolated, is a man in his 20s who has not left the country. The lack of a travel history means that he contracted the virus in the United States, suggesting undetected transmission of the new variant here.
The discovery will only add to the urgency of the Covid-19 vaccination campaign currently underway, which some public health experts have criticized for being too slow. The Trump administration has dispatched more than 11 million doses of the two available Covid-19 vaccines, but just over 2.1 million people across the country have received an injection since vaccines began on December 14, according to data Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
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President-elect Joe Biden criticized the Trump administration for its slow implantation of the vaccine in a speech on Tuesday. He warned that the administration’s effort to distribute and administer the vaccine “is not progressing as it should” and that if the pace of the vaccination effort continues “it will take years, not months, to vaccinate the American people.”
He promised to “move heaven and earth to take us in the right direction” and foreshadowed a series of political efforts that will likely take in his first 100 days in office, including using the Defense Products Act to speed up vaccine manufacturing, establishing a public health awareness campaign and sending mobile vaccination units to communities that are difficult to access. Biden also reiterated his earlier promise to ensure that 100 million doses of Covid-19 vaccines are administered in his first 100 days in office.
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However, he also sought to moderate expectations.
“This will take more time than anyone would like and more time than the Trump administration’s promises suggested,” said Biden. “This will be the biggest operational challenge we have ever faced as a nation, but we are going to do that. It will require a major new effort that is not yet underway. ”
In interviews earlier this month, Moncef Slaoui, the chief advisor for vaccine development and distribution efforts known as Operation Warp Speed, had promised that 20 million Americans would be vaccinated against Covid-19 in December.
Michael Pratt, communications director for Operation Warp Speed, insisted that the effort to distribute the vaccine is largely on schedule. He said the projections that Slaoui and others had previously shared referred only to the number of doses that should be available by the end of the year, not the number of vaccinations scheduled for the first few weeks of launch.
“Operation Warp Speed continues on its way to having approximately 40 million doses of vaccine and allocating 20 million doses for the first vaccinations by the end of December 2020, with distribution of the 20 million first doses covering the first week of January, as states place orders for them, ”said Pratt.
Pratt pointed to a gap in data reporting as part of the reason for the large gap between the number of vaccines delivered to the states and those actually administered. However, state data compiled by the New York Times also shows that most states administered only a fraction of the doses of vaccine they received.
“We are below where we want to be,” said Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, on CNN Monday. “As I am not responsible for the launch myself, I cannot personally guarantee that we will achieve it. I hope we do. “
Some vaccine experts, however, said they are not surprised by the speed of distribution of the vaccine so far.
“It had to be that way,” Paul Offit, a professor of pediatrics at Children’s Hospital in Philadelphia, told STAT. “We had to trip and fall and trip and find this out.”
Claire Hannan, executive director of the Association of Immunization Managers, said that part of the gap between administered and administered doses is likely due to a program run by CVS and Walgreens to vaccinate people in nursing homes. The states participating in the program have to reserve 50% of their doses, which Hannan said may be responsible for part of the difference between the doses sent and administered nationally.
“I don’t think it’s bad,” she said of the pace of distribution so far. “I think it will always be like this. And I think that’s really the easy part. “
The logistics of the implementation were largely left to the states to navigate. State and local public health officials have warned for months that more than $ 8 billion in additional funding would be needed to maintain the infrastructure needed to administer the vaccines. Instead, the Trump administration provided states with $ 340 million in funds to prepare for vaccinations. Congressional lawmakers also hesitated for months to appropriate additional funds for the distribution of vaccines, although the coronavirus stimulus package signed by President Trump on Sunday included $ 8 billion in funding for this effort.
“We are trying to do everything with little money, when in fact we need large amounts of money invested. It has been phenomenal, the needs that should have been met six months ago, so we are not continuing to build the system as we implement it, ”said Ann Lewandowski of the Wisconsin Rural Health Cooperative.
“There seems to be no investment or plan in the last mile,” tweeted Ashish Jha, dean of Brown University School of Public Health. “No effort by the Fed to help states launch a real vaccination infrastructure. Didn’t the feds know that vaccines were coming? Planning around vaccination sites, etc. Shouldn’t it have happened in October or November? “
Some public health officials, including former CDC director Tom Frieden, publicly blamed Operation Warp Speed’s leadership for the pace of deployment. Warp Speed’s distribution efforts are led by Gus Perna, a military general and logistics specialist who has no previous experience with vaccination campaigns.
“What happens when a vaccination program is run as a logistics program by people appointed by the White House with zero vaccination experience?” Frieden wrote on Twitter. “It doesn’t start well.”
Other public health leaders told STAT that the lack of communication with the federal government hampered their initial distribution efforts.
Anita Lundquist, executive director of pharmacy services at St. Croix Regional Medical Center in Wisconsin, said she did not know what kind of vaccine the center would receive, the number of doses or the delivery time until the shipment arrived on Monday. This uncertainty meant that the hospital had to continually reschedule initial vaccination appointments for staff. It also meant that hospital staff had to prepare plans to administer the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, which require different storage protocols.
At various times in December, the Wisconsin Department of Health suggested that St. Croix Regional Medical Center would receive 200 doses of the Pfizer vaccine. Instead, they received 100 doses of injections from Moderna, less than a quarter of what is needed to vaccinate the entire medical staff.
Those awaiting delivery of vaccines need to rely on updates from health departments, as the federal government’s Tiberius tracking system used throughout the country to monitor dose locations can only be accessed through the state, said Lewandowski of Wisconsin Rural Health Cooperative.
“The alerts are not working optimally and CDC’s communication with the state is also not ideal,” said Lewandowski. A local hospital was waiting for the vaccine on Christmas Eve, she said, only to discover after repeatedly e-mailing the state health department that doses were late because the FedEx truck carrying them was involved in an accident.
These last-minute delays have a significant impact on scheduling, especially since many health systems plan vaccinations, so the team has days off to recover from side effects. “It all goes out the window,” said Lewandowski.
Snowstorms on the East Coast last week also likely reduced distribution. The Wisconsin State Department of Health told hospitals there were delays in delivering Moderna in time, Lundquist said, meaning that hospitals hoping to receive the vaccine last Wednesday instead received the shipment on Monday or Tuesday.