NEW YORK (Reuters) – Seattle public health officials have so little funding for COVID-19 at hand that they fear they will have to shut down some virus testing sites as they mount a campaign to dose their 2.3 million residents with vaccines from the Pfizer Inc. and Moderna Inc.
King County, which represents greater Seattle, has $ 14 million in COVID-19 funding for 2021, roughly enough to finance its operations for a single month, and a fraction of the $ 87 million COVID-19 emergency aid that received in 2020, said Ingrid Ulrey, King County’s director of public health policy.
“We’ve been on pins and needles for the past three or four months, watching what’s going on at the federal level, waiting, watching,” she said. When the newly approved federal funds finally reach their level, she expects them to be less than this year, insufficient and too late.
“It is shockingly low,” she added. “We have a huge, new and daunting task of delivering vaccines.” King County is in danger of failing to hire the 40 additional staff needed to start the next wave of public vaccinations.
In US counties, the funding crisis has limited the hiring of the necessary vaccine staff, delayed the creation of vaccination centers and hampered efforts to raise public awareness, officials told Reuters.
The federal government has spent more than $ 10 billion to accelerate the development of the COVID-19 vaccine, but has so far disbursed little funding for distribution, even when it shifted responsibility for actual immunizations to state and local governments.
A new $ 2.3 trillion pandemic aid and spending package provides states with $ 8.75 billion to help with vaccination, according to what state and local authorities have requested, but months after the distribution work should have started.
“The Federal Government distributed the vaccines to the states. Now it is up to the states to manage. Move! “US President Donald Trump tweeted on Wednesday.
The promised wave of newly approved vaccinations was just a ripple: about 2.8 million Americans received an injection, including less than 170,000 residents of nursing homes, one of the most at-risk groups, according to the Control and Disease Prevention (CDC). This is far less than the 20 million vaccinations the federal government promised for December.
Nearly 10 million of the 12.4 million doses the government has distributed to states remain unused, and on Tuesday President-elect Joe Biden said it would take years, not months, to vaccinate most Americans at the current rate.
CVS and Walgreens hospitals and pharmacies are responsible for the first wave of vaccinations by health professionals and long-term residents. But local health systems will play a leading role in immunizing the next big waves and will be essential for groups such as uninsured, underinsured, homeless and others.
The shortage of local public health personnel will only become more challenging as the vaccination effort expands to essential workers and older Americans, said Claire Hannan, director of the Association of Immunization Managers, a trade group for public health departments. locations.
Brandon Meline, head of logistics for the Public Health District of Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, said the district was raising funds for rainy days until more federal assistance arrives.
“We have four weeks of meaningful planning and two weeks of active distribution and we do not have a secure funding flow,” Meline said in an interview on Christmas Eve, while waiting for a vaccine shipment to arrive.
Coconino County, Arizona’s largest by area, needs to hire about 20 people to run vaccination clinics and serve residents who live hours from hospitals, including some at the bottom of the Grand Canyon, said Kim Musselman, county director health and human services department.
Musselman said his nurses are overburdened with staff from the free vaccination clinic he set up in Coconino County and will struggle to maintain it, let alone create additional clinics without further funding. The state has not signaled that aid is near.
“We were told, because we asked repeatedly, is there any reimbursement for public assistance for vaccine-related expenses? And we continue to hear no right now, ”she said.
Reporting by Rebecca Spalding and Carl O’Donnell; edition of Peter Henderson, Nick Zieminski and Jonathan Oatis