Trump administration officials are arguing with Moderna about how to speed up the coronavirus vaccination process by giving people only half the recommended dose of the company’s vaccine, an adviser said on Sunday.
Moncel Slaoui, Operation Warp Speed’s chief scientific adviser, said there was evidence that giving people aged 18 to 55 two half doses “induces an identical immune response” to the normal 100 microgram dose.
During an interview with Margaret Brennan on CBS’s “Face the Nation” program, Slaoui said the strategy “means exactly reaching the goal of immunizing twice the number of people with the doses we have”.
But Slaoui also strongly defended the idea that people need only one injection instead of the current two-dose regimen, so it’s not clear how giving people two half-doses would be different.
Slaoui’s comments come at a time when the United States’ vaccination program is coming out of the gate. Vaccine delivery has been slower than expected and actual vaccinations have been even slower.
The government did not come close to its goal of vaccinating 20 million people by the end of 2020. Only about 4 million Americans received the first of two doses, and just over 13 million doses were delivered, according to the Centers Disease Control and Prevention.
Logistical problems have affected the Trump administration’s distribution efforts, with much of the crucial “last mile” of work falling on local underfunded health departments.
States are struggling to administer the doses they already have, leading many experts to question a strategy that effectively doubles the availability of the dose, but does not provide additional help to jurisdictions.
Slaoui told Brennan that he and others in the administration assumed that when states ordered a specific number of doses, they had distribution plans in place.
“Our assumption is that there is a plan to immunize. We are here to help with any specific request. We will do the best we can, as we have been doing for the past eight months, to make these vaccines, in fact, put you in people’s arms” said Slaoui.
Under the current federal plan, the government’s Operation Warp Speed distributes only half the number of doses required to states each week. The other half remains in a tank, retained to ensure that there is sufficient supply for a second dose.
Given the inefficient implementation, health experts and federal officials have been looking for ways to accelerate the process.
One possibility, recently adopted in the United Kingdom, is to prioritize the administration of a first dose to everyone, postponing the second dose by up to three months.
Slaoui said he does not see this happening in the United States and questioned the science behind the delay.
Both Moderna and Pfizer were authorized in a two-dose form, and Slaoui said the tests show that the second dose gives an immune response 10 times greater than the first dose.
“We have no data after a dose,” said Slaoui. Delaying the vaccination schedule “without any data I think I would not be responsible,” he said.