SALT LAKE CITY – Utah Department of Health officials said on Sunday that the agency plans to work with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in an effort to ensure it is getting its “fair share” of the COVID-19 vaccine.
The health department made this announcement in a series of “vaccine transparency” statements after a report from the Salt Lake Tribune on Saturday that said Utah received fewer doses of the COVID-19 vaccine per capita than other states.
The department recognized that vaccines were distributed to states based on the proportion of the adult population. Since Utah’s middle age is the youngest in the country, the state was expected to receive fewer doses.
“We have no reason to believe that Utah is receiving fewer doses than it should,” says the agency’s statement, in part.
“We asked the CDC to make sure Utah is getting its fair share of the vaccine,” he continues. “They are not aware of any discrepancies, but have agreed to revise their numbers to verify accuracy.”
Since the launch of the COVID-19 vaccine began in mid-December, most doses of the vaccine have ended up in the arms of medical professionals and emergency responders. It is also approved for residents of long-term care institutions, school teachers and older individuals. In Utah, anyone 70 and older is eligible for the vaccine. Some states have started vaccinating individuals aged 65 and over.
Individuals aged 70 or over represented only 6% of the state’s population at the time of the 2010 Census; about 13% were individuals aged 60 or over. More than three quarters of the state’s population, at that time, was under 50 years old.
Although the Census Bureau has not yet finalized the Census 2020 data, estimates from recent years indicate that Utah still leans heavily towards a young population, including ages that are not yet eligible for the vaccine based on federal distribution guidelines. For example, it was estimated that only 16% of the state’s 3.2 million residents in 2019 were people aged 65 and over.
The CDC data updated on Sunday night shows that South Carolina (8,803 per 100,000) was the last in the distribution of the COVID-19 vaccine per capita in the US, followed by Nevada (9,316 per 100,000). But the data shows all vaccine distributions since mid-December, including doses delivered to healthcare professionals, emergency responders and teachers, many of them under the age of 65-70 or older. It also does not indicate how many were delivered specifically to long-term care institutions – something the federal government oversees.
Neither the CDC nor the state health department provides a division of vaccines delivered or administered based on the groups that received the vaccine. The health department said on Sunday that it provided brief data on where vaccines were going in the state, but withdrew that information “as we went through a data quality assurance process.” He is expected to return to the department’s COVID-19 panel in the near future.
Meanwhile, Utah Governor Spencer Cox announced last week that the state would provide new data on the time between arrival and administration of vaccine doses. The state released a new set of data on Thursday showing the number of vaccine doses prior to seven days that have not yet been used.
“No dose should be left on the shelf for more than seven days,” Cox said during a news conference. “My only focus has been on the first doses because the first doses lead to the second doses, and any capacity we have to distribute vaccines should be focused on those first doses as soon as possible.”
The state reported 31,398 doses of unused vaccine older than seven days that day. More than 80% of them have been reserved for federal pharmacy partners in charge of administering vaccines in long-term care facilities.
In its response on Sunday, the Utah Department of Health updated the number to 26,399 unused doses of vaccine. Community nursing services and local health departments – those in charge of administering doses to emergency responders and residents – have exhausted all allocated supplies, while hospitals and clinics have consumed 96% of the supply and partner federal pharmacies have consumed 49%.
The health department said on Sunday that federal pharmaceutical partners had 28,010 unused doses in total – 23,235 of them were reserved for the first doses. The department said pharmacies like CVS and Walgreens “are doing an excellent job” vaccinating staff and patients at long-term care facilities, but that the federal government has provided many doses reserved for long-term care facilities than necessary.
“Some of these doses are probably already available, in preparation for the next clinics this week. However, it seems that the federal government has allocated too much vaccine to these suppliers ”, says the health department.
“We will ensure that Walgreens and CVS receive the doses they need to fulfill their obligations at long-term care institutions,” continues the department. “But all doses above and beyond need to be transferred or diverted to other providers across the state that have the ability to put them into arms as quickly as possible.”
Nearly 230,000 Utahns have already received the COVID-19 vaccine, according to an update by the state health department on Monday.
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Carter Williams