On Friday, state officials looked hopeful of being able to meet the new May 1 target, which Biden announced after notifying governors only a few hours in advance on Thursday night. But they are also cautious about overstated promises, recognizing that any number of factors can hinder the vaccination effort. It is a harsh truth that public officials will have to send messages carefully to avoid further frustrating an audience tired of the crisis, eager to put the pandemic behind them.
“It’s a good thing to aspire, but I think we probably need to keep an eye out and see how we are doing when we arrive in April,” said Marcus Plescia, the medical director of the State and Territorial Health Association, said of Biden’s goal.
Anticipating an influx of doses, some states already expected to make injections that were scarce available to all adults in the coming weeks. After Alaska became the first to do so on Tuesday, the governors of Utah and Michigan announced moves in that direction this week. Ohio and Connecticut are also on track to meet Biden’s goal, spokesmen for those governors said.
White House officials have repeatedly presented themselves as willing partners to help states vaccinate their residents, a contrast to the Trump administration, which left states to handle much of the increase. Biden is promising new federal resources to help the effort, recently signing a $ 1.9 trillion Covid aid plan approved with Democratic votes only. This includes the significant expansion in the number of mass vaccination sites, pharmacies and community health centers that provide the vaccines and send more medical staff across the country. The government also promises to create a new website and call center across the country by May 1 to help Americans schedule appointments, while promising new technological help for states to improve their own registration systems.
“We spent a lot of time working on the supply, the number of seats, the number of vaccinators and we believe that May 1 is the right time,” said White House coronavirus coordinator Jeff Zients during a news conference on Friday .
Despite the new federal aid, state officials are still working on logistical issues that may not be fully resolved in the next seven weeks.
In Oklahoma, where the state has already opened eligibility for the vast majority of adults, officials say they are trying to create more vaccination sites across the state to accommodate the increased supply.
“It doesn’t help us much to have millions of doses or hundreds of thousands of doses and just have a narrow place where someone can access them,” said Oklahoma Deputy Health Commissioner Keith Reed.
Some state officials have also said they fear to act too quickly to expand eligibility, when many high-risk people have not yet had a chance to make an appointment. Many states that sought to prioritize eligibility based on risk have already discarded these booklets due to the delay in the vaccination effort.
“We’re also starting to lose control over the hierarchy of vulnerable patients, so we want to make sure that we’re really focused on [that]”said Clay Marsh, the West Virginia state coronavirus czar. His state could open eligibility widely within the next month, he said.
Since the slow start of the country’s vaccination campaign, the pace has accelerated to more than 2 million doses per day. The US on Friday surpassed the mark of 100 million doses administered since the start of the vaccination campaign, almost three months ago. A quarter of the adult population received at least the first injection, including 61% of people aged 65 and over, a group especially susceptible to the virus.
An expected increase in vaccine production in the coming weeks should mean that the states will be inundated with new doses. But some state officials say they are reluctant to plan ahead without having a concrete sense of their expected quotas. The Biden government has been advising states at least three weeks in advance of early shipments, but has promised to provide a larger window to help with their planning.
In Oregon, state officials originally planned to open the vaccine’s eligibility to anyone over 45 on June 1 and to the general population by July 1. But the state will accelerate that schedule “if doses increase,” said a senior official.
“We will know a lot more when we have better visibility into our vaccine supply,” said Patrick Allen, head of the Oregon Health Authority.
The state is considering accepting the Biden government’s offer of technical assistance to expand its registration system, Allen said. The state recently revised its failed naming system after Portland area residents made 400,000 attempts to schedule just 3,400 appointments at the Oregon Convention Center. Now it is requiring residents to pre-register, with the state choosing names through a lottery – a system that Allen says is “scalable”.
Other health officials said the May 1 target would help states to set priorities.
“It is good to know that this is the vision – which is something that is being presented in advance, so that we can be sure that our systems and strategies are up to the task by May 1,” said Adriane Casalotti, head of government affairs for the National Association of Municipal and Municipal Health Officials.
“There is a lot that needs to be done in our systems and collaboration between public health and healthcare to be ready for that date,” added Casalotti.
Brianna Ehley contributed to this report.