Millions of Americans are not receiving their second dose of coronavirus vaccine within the recommended time frame to ensure optimal protection from COVID-19, according to a CBS MoneyWatch review of the latest data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
On Wednesday, just over 2.8 million Americans who received their first injection – almost 12% of those vaccinated – did not receive their second dose within the 28-day interval prescribed for the Modern vaccine, one of two approved for use in the U.S. . another vaccine, jointly produced by Pfizer and BioNTech in Germany, must be administered 21 days after the first dose.
The number of people who have not yet received the second dose of the vaccine is based on the most recent public data from the CDC. Vaccine and health experts who reviewed the CBS MoneyWatch figures said that this agrees with sparse reports of delays in people taking both vaccines within the suggested timeframe.
“I’m hearing anecdotally about people trying to schedule their second doses and struggling to do so,” said Bruce Y. Lee, who studies health management and public policy at City University of New York. “It is a challenge to launch a vaccine, especially when it involves two injections. All of this should have been planned last year before the launch, and this is further evidence that it wasn’t. ”
At the end of January, 96% of Americans who received the first vaccine received the second within four days of the prescribed interval, according to previous CDC data obtained by CBS News. But the agency did not release an update on how the country is managing the two shots within the recommended period.
Meanwhile, the share of people who receive their second dose on time has narrowed – and the difference, which reached 1 million just a week ago, has been growing rapidly, to 2,826,134 people on February 24.
A CDC spokeswoman said that part of the recent slowdown, both in the management of the former and the latter, was due to the climate. She said the CDC is planning to release new information on completion rates for the second dose soon.
Hospital administrators and state health officials who spoke to CBS MoneyWatch attributed the delays in people getting the second injection to the lack of vaccine doses, as well as scheduling and shipping confusion.
- In Arizona, residents who went to the State Farm Stadium mass vaccination site outside Phoenix were unable to schedule a second injection. Although the scheduling issue has already been resolved, it has caused delays. Only 35% of those who were vaccinated in Arizona received a second dose, one of the lowest rates among states. This compares to around 50% across the country.
- In Pennsylvania, officials said last week that a previous confusion caused several health professionals to use doses that should be reserved for a second injection in new patients. Last week, the problem left the state at least 60,000 doses below what was needed to deliver the second injection in time.
- In Iowa, some counties that should receive shipments of Moderna’s vaccine have received the Pfizer-BioNTech version. The two photos are not interchangeable. Earlier this week, the state health official told some 14,000 residents who live in and around Des Moines that they received injections of Moderna that they would have to wait beyond the scheduled date for follow-up doses.
Apparently less worrying, according to health professionals, is that Americans simply choosing to skip your second photos, a problem that experts warned could hinder vaccine implantation.
Dr. David Basel, head of vaccination at Avera Medical in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, one of the state’s largest healthcare networks, said that the failure to attend the second injection was responsible for less than 1% of all vaccines there. The biggest reason people don’t show up for vaccines is a disease in the meantime, he added: “We are vaccinating the elderly and the most at-risk populations first. People get sick, and it is often not with COVID.”
The lack of a vaccine to provide second doses appears to be a key issue for hospital systems. Jessica Daley, a pharmacist and vice president of Premier, who purchases medical supplies for thousands of hospitals in the United States, said that many hospitals were instructed to use all the doses they had in their first injections and that more supplies would come. Recently, however, they have seen their shipments drop. In the past few weeks, several states have moved more vaccines to pharmacy chains or mass vaccination sites and away from hospitals.
“We did a local survey, and the number one concern for hospitals is really getting the vaccine,” said Daley. “I have heard of hospitals that do not receive these second doses.”
A new 42 day CDC window
Most encouragingly, some health experts believe that delays in second doses of the vaccine do not hamper the United States’ vaccination effort. Earlier this month, the CDC released a new guideline that the second injection could be given up to 42 days after the first dose, although the agency reiterated that a second injection in 21 or 28 days was ideal.
Recent recent studies also suggest that a single injection still provides significant protection against the spread of coronavirus, although not as much as two doses.
“In the grand scheme of things, when you look at the other problems we are having, this is a minor issue,” said Will Humble, a former Arizona public health officer.
Humble also said that ensuring that more people receive the first dose, instead of completing the second dose, will make the distribution of the vaccine fairer to minority communities and still likely lower infection rates in general.
“We fit into a less effective way of saving lives because of the way the tests were formulated,” he said of the initial emphasis on administering two doses.
Still, most health experts advise individuals to try to meet the recommended intervals to receive two vaccines. Tinglong Dai, professor of health management at Johns Hopkins Carey Business School, said vaccine supply is not increasing as fast as needed to continue the current rate of vaccinations. States will need to withhold more doses to ensure they have enough to deliver a second dose within the appropriate timeframe, he added.
Earlier this week, Dai released a study with two co-authors from the University of Oxford and the University of California at Berkeley that found that releasing more second doses to increase the number of people taking at least one injection does not reduce infection rates. by coronavirus. The article concluded that prolonging the time between doses still lowers the rate of infection, but will eventually lead to more cases as the pandemic continues.
“I think the distribution will improve,” said Dai. “But, unless the vaccine supply increases exponentially, we will have an increasing accumulation [of people waiting for that second shot]. “