The Covid-19 vaccination rate in the United States, which had been accelerating after a chaotic start, fell rapidly after a winter storm hit much of the country, closing vaccination sites and delaying sending millions of doses.
© Bryan Woolston / Reuters
UPS’s air hub in Louisville, Ky., Closed last week due to bad weather.
About 1.52 million doses of vaccine are being administered daily, according to a New York Times database. Although it is still above President Biden’s target, it is the lowest rate since February 8.
The country has been racing to vaccinate as many people as possible before more contagious and possibly deadly variants of the coronavirus become dominant, and the number was well above the president’s goal of 1.5 million doses over several days. The peak reached 1.7 million on February 16, before a brutal winter storm hit states from coast to coast. Bad weather delayed vaccine supply shipments from two centers: a FedEx center in Memphis and a UPS website in Louisville, Ky.
More than 2,000 vaccine sites were in areas with power outages, according to the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Many were not only forced to shut down, but also relied on generators to maintain doses at the deep-frozen temperatures needed to prevent them from deteriorating.
New York City has less than 1,000 first doses of Covid-19 available due to delays in shipping caused by snowstorms across the country, the city said on Saturday. Mayor Bill de Blasio said New York City has delayed scheduling up to 35,000 appointments for the first dose because of the shortage.
The storm accumulated six million doses, equivalent to about three days of delays in boarding, preventing consultations across the country, Andy Slavitt, a White House consultant for a pandemic, told a news conference.
The states made up for part of the accumulation of existing shares, said Slavitt. Of the six million doses, 1.4 million were already in transit on Friday, he added, and the rest are due next week.
“We are asking vaccine administration locations to extend their schedules further and offer additional consultations and try to reschedule vaccinations in the coming days and weeks as more supplies arrive,” said Slavitt on Friday.
Bottlenecks and delays came as states expanded access to the vaccine to more groups, despite a limited supply that is not growing enough to keep up.
California Governor Gavin Newsom said that as of March 1, the state will reserve 10 percent of its first doses of vaccine for teachers and school staff, after expanding access to all Californians with chronic illnesses and disabilities.
Some states have restarted vaccination. Texas, after an icy storm left millions of people without power and water, reopened the inoculation sites. The state received nearly 600,000 first doses of the vaccine for the next week, according to the state health department, against about 400,000 first doses for the week of February 15.
The doses that were due to be delivered this week are still waiting to be shipped to Texas from out-of-state warehouses, state health officials said. Missed doses are expected to be delivered in the first half of this week.
In Dallas, a major vaccination center in Fair Park will reopen on Sunday, but the locations in Austin remain closed.
On Sunday, Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner said in “Face the Nation” that vaccinations were resumed there and that an FEMA website would open on Monday with the potential to administer vaccines to 6,000 people a day for the next few years. six to eight weeks. He estimated that the city could vaccinate more than 100,000 people in the next week. “People are resilient,” he said. “I’m very proud of the people of Houston, for how they came together.”
New York State is still scheduling appointments for the opening of new mass vaccination sites in Brooklyn and Queens on Wednesday in partnership with FEMA.
State officials said they received 40 percent of their vaccine distribution for the week and expected the rest to be distributed on Sunday.
The new locations, at Medgar Evers College in Brooklyn and York College in Queens, are only open to residents of certain postal codes and aim to increase low vaccination rates in communities of color. Data released on Tuesday showed dramatic disparities between vaccination rates in whiter areas of New York City compared to predominantly black neighborhoods.
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