We are still seeing problems distributing the vaccine in some states, but there is genuine good news in production today. A House vaccine subcommittee held a hearing today and Moderna’s president and Pfizer business director said there will be a substantial increase in vaccine delivery next month.
By the end of March, Pfizer and Moderna hope to have provided the US government with a total of 220 million doses of vaccines, up from about 75 million sent so far.
“We believe we are on the right track,” said Moderna’s president Stephen Hoge, describing the ways in which the company increased production. “We think we are in a very good spot.” …
Questioned incisively if they face shortages of raw materials, equipment or financing that would hinder these schedules, all manufacturers expressed confidence that they had enough supplies and had already resolved some of the first bottlenecks in production.
“At this point, I can confirm that we are not seeing any shortages of raw materials,” said John Young of Pfizer.
Both Pfizer and Moderna said they are on track to deliver 300 million doses each by the summer. As the two vaccines require two doses, this means that we are on the right track to have sufficient doses for the entire country.
However, there is more good news coming today from Johnson and Johnson. An FDA advisory committee will meet this Friday and vote on whether the FDA grants emergency use authorization for J&J’s single injection vaccine. The FDA is not required to agree to the committee’s vote, but in the case of the two previous vaccines, it granted the USA a day after the advisory committee’s vote. This probably means that the J&J vaccine will be approved this weekend and dose delivery will start immediately:
US Food and Drug Administration vaccine consultants will meet on Friday to discuss whether to recommend Johnson & Johnson’s Covid-19 vaccine for emergency use authorization …
The Biden government said last week that if authorized, there are likely to be millions of single-digit doses available in the coming weeks. On Tuesday, Dr. Richard Nettles of Johnson & Johnson will say that the plan “is to start shipping immediately after emergency use authorization and deliver enough single doses by the end of March to allow vaccination of more than 20 million Americans, “according to observations prepared to be delivered to a subcommittee of the Chamber’s Energy and Commerce Committee.
Together, this means that by the end of March Pfizer and Moderna will have delivered enough vaccine for 110 million people (two doses each) and J&J will deliver enough for another 20 million people. If states increase their delivery game, we will be approaching half the vaccinated population in about five to six weeks. And if we can continue, we should approach the herd immunity territory in May. If you had said that this was possible a year ago, you would have been labeled a lunatic.
There are a few wildcards here. The first is that states must be able to monitor the increase in available doses. At first, some states like California clearly struggled to get the doses they had to reach qualified people (the elderly, frontline health professionals, etc.). The other wildcard is the variants. The evidence suggests that they are not only more easily transmitted, but also more deadly. Existing vaccines appear to be somewhat less effective against the particular South African variant, which has already been identified in several US states
Still, the big picture looks pretty good now. If all goes well, maybe we can expect something like a normal summer. Even before we reach collective immunity, the number of cases and deaths must drop significantly. There is light at the end of the tunnel and for the first time it looks like there is a train coming towards us.