The United States had no trouble reaching the terrible 20 million coronavirus cases, but reaching the federal government’s goal of vaccinating 20 million people by the end of 2020 proved to be a major problem.
Just under three million Americans were vaccinated when the crystal-encrusted ball fell in New York’s almost deserted Times Square at midnight on New Year’s Eve to mark the end of a hellish year.
Now the distribution of the vaccine in the United States is being routinely described as “chaos”, with criticism that inept employees are “spoiling” efforts.
More than 10,000 people died in the United States in the last three days of 2020 alone, to bring the national death toll to close to 350,000 so far, including the worst 24-hour number in the entire pandemic, when more than 3,700 people died in the last Wednesday, according to Johns Hopkins University data.
Therefore, vaccines are the great hope to fight the outbreak. But experts are warning that hundreds of thousands of deaths are possible if the inoculation process is not carried out quickly and solidly.
“Basically, the federal government is messing up the vaccine launch,” said Ashish Jha, dean of Brown University’s school of public health.
“They thought their job was done when the vaccine reached the states, and there really isn’t a well-defined plan.”
He added: “What America is suffering from is the consequence of incompetence in the federal leadership – the whole pandemic has been harmed by a group of people, not just Donald Trump – who don’t understand how things work and can’t get something to work from. effectively. “
Jha noted that he was not including U.S. infectious disease specialist Anthony Fauci or White House coronavirus task force coordinator Deborah Birx among this group.
If implantation continues at the current pace, Jha said, it could take “many, many months and years” to meet the country’s vaccination goals.
And if this delay continues for months, it could cause the United States to lose “several hundred thousand people,” he warned.
An analysis by NBC earlier this week found that, with the current vaccination rate, “it would take almost 10 years to inoculate enough Americans to keep the pandemic in check.”
The revolutionary new vaccines in operation so far in the west of Pfizer / BioNTech, Moderna and Oxford University / AstraZeneca are lifesavers, with even more being tested.
“It looks like the vaccine can reduce the risk of … symptomatic Covid,” said Bruce Y Lee, professor at the graduate school in public health and health policies at CUNY in New York.
But he warned: “Every week, two weeks, three weeks late, while cases are on the rise, is costing lives – especially if we’re talking about healthcare professionals.”
The state of publicly administered vaccines in many areas of the United States stems from a combination of scarce funding and scattered logistics.
Public health in the United States is chronically underfunded. Local and state officials have long warned federal officials that they needed more than $ 8 billion in additional money to build an infrastructure to carry gunshots. Instead, the White House gave states only $ 340 million for vaccination preparations.
For months, some Congressional lawmakers were irritated to provide more money for the distribution of vaccines. It was only last Sunday, when the delayed new coronavirus aid bill was signed by Trump, that additional $ 8 billion funding came, explained STAT News.
More money for the states will not fully solve the problem. Experts said a unified national plan is needed to resolve logistical problems.
“Sufficient doses have not been produced and distributed,” said Lee, who is also CUNY’s executive director of public health informatics, computational and operational research.
“Of the doses that were distributed, most were not administered. They are getting [caught] in the supply chain … or not being managed, which is not very surprising, because there was no clear and coordinated national plan. “
The federal government’s decision to put the initiative in the states on how they would administer doses of the vaccine to people exacerbated these problems.
The Pfizer / BioNetch vaccine should be stored between minus 112F (minus 80C) and minus 94F (minus 70C), while the Moderna jab needs to be stored at minus 4F (minus 20C) – meaning localities may have difficulty to find the proper capacity of the freezer.
There is also a lack of federal coordination on vaccine accessories, such as syringes, needles and alcohol swabs.
“We have to remember that, earlier this year, the tests went wrong because we ran out of swabs,” said Lee.
Numerous reports in the United States paint a picture of random or limited deployment.
Texas residents complained that providers don’t pick up the phone when they call for information, that official websites are difficult to navigate – and that they don’t know where to get the vaccine, reported Dallas ABC affiliate WFAA-TV.
In Florida, where people 65 and older can also start vaccinating, elderly people were seen camping overnight for the vaccine.
Terry Beth Hadler, 69, lined up in an overnight parking lot with hundreds of others outside the library in Bonita Springs, southwest Florida.
She waited 14 hours and told the Associated Press that a fight almost started before dawn on Tuesday, when some people cut the queue.
“I’m afraid the event has spread too far, I was petrified,” said Hadler.
Near Miami, the elderly crowded phone lines and a health department website in an often futile attempt to get vaccination appointments, reported the South Florida Sun-Sentinel.
New York City, the worldwide coronavirus hotspot in early spring, is also suffering from slow distribution.
The city received more than 340,000 doses, but administered only about 88,000, the New York Times reported on Friday.
No one denies that it is a challenge to carry out a massive vaccination campaign in the midst of a public health crisis that has overwhelmed health personnel and services in many parts of the country.
Claire Hannan, head of the Immunization Managers’ Association, said in a statement sent via email: “Doses delivered to hospitals will not be administered overnight. Hospitals are moving at a very deliberate pace. Providers need to be trained and health professionals need to receive education about the vaccine ”.
She added: “Hospitals are also overwhelmed now, we are asking for a lot of their time, resources, space, energy and effort to coordinate vaccination clinics, they have to address vaccination in the midst of patient care.”
The pressure is intense.
“We hope to advance at the speed of light and I think they are really moving at a very good pace, as this is a completely new vaccine,” Jessica Justman, associate professor of medicine in epidemiology at Columbia Mailman School of Public Health.
This is not to say that delays, even if expected, should not be resolved immediately. Both facts are true: delays were virtually inevitable, but they will cost lives, she noted.
“Hundreds of thousands of people are dying and the vaccine must be launched as soon as possible,” said Justman.
Some public health experts believe the United States needs to take a more innovative approach, including the latest UK plan, which aims to give as many people as possible the first dose, rather than withholding doses to ensure ready quantities of the initial dose. – scarce supplies to give the same people the second injection needed a few weeks after the first injection.
“In the UK, they are spacing the amount of time between the first and the second dose, which is a very creative idea,” said Justman. “I believe that the UK would not make that decision without having data to back it up.”
Jha de Brown said the science that shows effectiveness with a single dose is not so strong, presenting a dilemma. The United States could continue to follow its current approach – not wanting to take any scientific risks and operating “exactly by the book” in the distribution of vaccines or to see if something new works to contain the crisis.
“I think the UK’s approach to getting a single dose is the right approach,” said Jha. “In my opinion, it is much more reasonable, given the state of play we are in, that we have to move on.”
On Friday, however, Fauci spoke out against following the UK model of delaying second shots to provide more people with the partial protection afforded by a single dose.
Meanwhile, the decision of some states to prioritize the elderly over essential non-health workers, which is opposed to federal recommendations, can create logistical challenges.
However, “in terms of getting the vaccine to the gun as soon as possible, that may not be too bad,” said Hannan.
She added: “The states did not have enough time or resources to configure these systems, so there will be hiccups. But again, the end result, every day that the vaccine is going to arms is a success. “
Brown’s Jha said the United States could get back on track.
Even in the midst of suffering, he concluded, “I think you can make a moderate set of changes, and I think you can fix it.”