The country’s vaccine distribution figures have baffled observers for weeks, with states claiming they need more vaccine when the data indicate that they still have many doses available.
President Biden’s health officials tried to explain on Wednesday, at least in part.
Speaking at a press conference, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said that not all vaccines that were delivered to the states are available for “insertion into people’s arms”.
Covid-19 White House response coordinator Jeff Zients took this explanation a step further.
“Part of what the states now have is inventory to make the second shot very, very important,” said Zients. “I think it is important that when you are looking at state stocks, you recognize that part of that stock is being held for the second very important shot.”
The Pfizer and Moderna Covid-19 vaccines currently available for emergency use in the U.S. require two doses. A federal panel tracks the national distribution of these vaccines. The data shows how many doses of the vaccine were delivered in each state, but does not differentiate between the first and the second dose.
Consider Florida, where federal data on Wednesday showed that about 3.1 million doses were administered and about 1.6 million were administered. This is about 50% of the doses that go to the arms.
On Monday, White House press secretary Jen Psaki used similar numbers to suggest that Florida had a good dose of vaccine after Florida Governor Ron DeSantis claimed the state was not getting enough supplies from the government federal government and needed more.
“I will notice, because we have data – first here, facts – first, they only distributed about 50% of the vaccines they received in Florida,” said Psaki. “So clearly they have a good dose of the vaccine.”
On Wednesday, DeSantis countered the White House’s comments, explaining that federal data did not count for the vaccine intended for second doses.
“When the person in the White House says Florida has all these doses, these are the second doses,” said DeSantis.
Other states also claim that part of their vaccine inventory is for a second injection.
“When the first dose arrives, you can just give it to someone. When a second dose arrives, it needs to be 21 days later for Pfizer or 28 days later for Moderna,” Kristen Ehresmann, director of Infectious Diseases, Minnesota Epidemiology Division, Prevention and Control, said in an email to CNN. “So, yes, we received this vaccine and administered it at the appropriate interval and it may seem that we are ‘sitting in doses’ when this is not the case.”
In New York, Governor Andrew Cuomo began expressing the state’s vaccine distribution numbers in terms of first and second doses, announcing on Wednesday that 96% of the state’s first allocated doses were administered, excluding the federal vaccination program. long-term institutions with CVS and Walgreens.
On Tuesday, Cuomo said his state was “basically without a vaccine”, but that same day New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, who had also complained that he lacked a vaccine, said the city had doses targeted second injection into your inventory.
“I have doses of one hundred thousand seconds,” de Blasio told MSNBC.
De Blasio went on to say that the doses were “on the shelf” and “cannot be used for weeks”. He said President Biden should order governments across the country to take the second doses in their stocks and use them now for the first doses.
“Even the first dose gives people about 50% protection,” he said.
Cuomo said on Tuesday that second doses are not being delivered as first doses due to uncertainty about how quickly additional doses of the vaccine can be made.
“The fear is, until you really know what the production schedule is, if you start using the second dose as the first dose, you will have to have a dramatically increased supply, otherwise you will leave people without a second dose when they are marked it is due, “said Cuomo.
It is unclear how many states have a second dose inventory, or how many states may be dealing with the distribution of second doses differently. The White House and the Department of Health and Human Services did not immediately respond to questions from CNN for additional details.
In Maryland, the state is not keeping any reserve doses in its warehouses, except for the doses to be administered that week, according to Charles Gischlar, of the state health department. Gischalar says that Maryland asked the federal government to automatically distribute second doses to professionals who received the first doses.
CNN’s Elizabeth Hartfield contributed to this story.