Last month, while nurses in New Jersey administered the first doses of the COVID-19 vaccine, health commissioner Judy Persichilli defused some of the moment’s optimism by warning that vaccinations would be slow.
“We expect demand for the vaccine to exceed supply,” said Persichilli in late December.
This turned out to be an understatement.
So far, New Jersey has administered at least the first dose of the vaccine to just 3.1% of people in the state, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Friday night. This is slightly lower than the national average of 3.2% and less than about half of all states.
Public health experts say New Jersey’s restricted and phased vaccination approach has unnecessarily delayed implementation.
“The phases are not working; they are extremely problematic, ”said Perry Halkitis, dean of the School of Public Health at Rutgers University. “We have to have phases, but we want porous phases.”
Halkitis compared the state’s phased approach to vaccines to a sinking ship, where a lifeboat needs to be filled before people can start filling the next. “It will end in death,” he said.
But even as they criticize the state’s vaccination plan, health experts recognize that a more methodical approach is preferable to what has been done in other states, such as Florida, which made national news last week when a more open vaccination strategy led long lines, Eventbrite programming, and reports from people outside the state receiving photos.
Florida’s strategy was to open vaccination for its large population of people over 65 – a group of more than 4 million, equal to about half of the entire population of New Jersey – although the state had only a small fraction of vaccines available to these people. Predictably, the confusion followed.
“The Florida implantation bothers me, as I see it, the idea of older adults lining up and waiting all night is disturbing for several reasons,” said Preeti Malani, director of health at the University of Michigan. “Nobody should do that.”
Jared Moskowitz, director of the Florida Emergency Management Division, told Orlando Sentinel that the lack of supplies and information from the federal government is the cause of the state’s vaccination problems, not a statewide planning or implementation problem.
But even with all of Florida’s problems getting vaccines, the state still administered vaccines to 3.6% of its population, a larger proportion than New Jersey.
“I can see the sense of vaccinating as many people as quickly as possible, even if they do not fall into the categories 1A, 1B, 1C that were initially recommended,” said Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital Philadelphia and a member of the FDA vaccine advisory board.
But a more efficient vaccine launch is somewhere between New Jersey and Florida, experts say.
“I believe that somewhere between a very conservative approach and a free vaccine for everyone, there is probably the right approach,” said Stephanie Silvera, an epidemiologist at Montclair State University. “I really think New Jersey has taken an overly cautious and conservative approach so far and it has resulted in a very slow rollout that we are only now beginning to see at a fast pace.”
Silvera added that state officials need to increase vaccination hours and train more people to apply the vaccines, so that it is as easy as possible for people to be vaccinated.
The slower-than-expected rate of vaccination, both in New Jersey and across the country, has increased tensions as the coronavirus conflagration continues to spread in the United States, regularly establishing daily records of deaths. The models now predict that in a few months more than 500,000 people will have been killed by COVID-19 in this country.
New Jersey health officials reported on Friday 5,490 new confirmed cases of coronavirus and 67 additional deaths. The state has already lost 20,320 residents in the COVID-19 outbreak – 18,229 confirmed deaths and 2,091 considered likely. New Jersey has already announced 1,231 confirmed deaths this month, after 1,890 in December.
On Wednesday, Governor Phil Murphy announced the first major expansion of the state’s vaccine program, opening vaccines to people age 65 and older and people with conditions that put them at greater risk for COVID-19-related health complications. This decision was based on changes in federal guidelines and the expectation that more doses will become available soon.
“It is somewhat, if not largely based on anticipating – not guaranteeing, but anticipating – the increase in vaccine deliveries, since the federal government will no longer hold doses, we are confident of taking these measures,” said Murphy on Wednesday . “We have established the infrastructure we need to do this work and we are now ready to start increasing our vaccination efforts exponentially.”
This infrastructure includes 259 planned vaccination posts, of which six are called mega sites. The state has a total of 165 locations open as of Wednesday, Murphy said.
More than 1 million people have already registered to be vaccinated and the state expects to administer vaccines to 70% of its adult population, about 4.7 million people, by May. People are asked to register on the state website and then make an appointment at one of the vaccination sites.
Halkitis said the vaccine expansion announced this week will help New Jersey, but added that he would like to see it expanded further.
“I think we will look better over time,” said Halkitis. “I think you need the rules, otherwise it becomes a MMA. 65 and immunocompromised (people) is a step in the right direction, but I would add teachers and other frontline workers. “
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Payton Guion can be contacted at [email protected].