Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar made a clear statement to governors across the country on Wednesday – ignore the priority plan and release the COVID-19 vaccine to as many people as possible.
- Azar said the United States should not let “perfection be the enemy of the good”.
What is happening?
Azar said the focus of the distribution of the COVID-19 vaccine should focus on vaccinating more people, rather than who should get the vaccines first, according to USA Today.
The original focus was on health workers and nursing home residents. But 70% of doses are still on drugstore shelves, reports USA Today. Therefore, Azar suggests transferring these vaccines to people.
- “We would much rather see states act as quickly as possible and use all possible avenues to meet demand – as places like Florida are trying to do – than leave vaccines in freezers,” said Azar. “It would be much better to act quickly and end up vaccinating some lower priority people than to let the vaccine stay put while states try to micromanage this problem. Faster administration can save lives now. “
The United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention originally said that nursing home residents and healthcare professionals should be among the first to receive the vaccine.
More changes in the COVID-19 vaccine plan
The Daily Beast reports that some senior officials working with the White House coronavirus task force have pressured states to provide the COVID-19 vaccine to anyone who wants it.
- States across the country must distribute excess COVID-19 vaccines to anyone who wants to receive them. The authorities suggest that states stop trying to create a strategy and focus on first come, first served, to ensure that vaccines do not expire.
Dr. Scott Gottlieb, a former FDA chief, has called on large pharmacies like CVS and Walgreens to start distributing the COVID-19 vaccine now, in order to get it to more people, as I wrote for Deseret News
- “Make the vaccine more widely available in retail pharmacies, through Walmart and Walgreens and CVS for a broader population, for a general population beginning with age,” said Gottlieb in an interview on the “Face the Nation” program. “We can go through the old continuum, make it available for 75 and above first, then 70 and above and 65 and above. There are 50 million Americans aged 65 and over, a large percentage of them probably want to be vaccinated. At some point, we need to allow the supply to meet the demand here and take vaccines into the arms of people who really want to get vaccinated and are going to go in search of vaccination ”.