President-elect Joe Biden will launch most of the available doses of the COVID-19 vaccine to speed up delivery to more people, a reversal of Trump’s administration policy, his office said on Friday.
WASHINGTON (AP) – With COVID-19 rising and vaccinations starting slowly, President-elect Joe Biden will quickly release most of the vaccine doses available to protect more people, his office said on Friday, a reversal of health policies. Trump administration.
“The president-elect believes that we must accelerate the delivery of the vaccine while continuing to ensure that Americans who need it most receive it as quickly as possible,” said spokesman TJ Ducklo in a statement. Biden “supports the release of immediately available doses and believes that the government should stop withholding vaccine supplies so that we can get more injections into the arms of Americans now.”
Biden’s plan is not to cut two-dose vaccines in half, a strategy that leading government scientists recommend against. Instead, it would speed up the delivery of the first doses and use the levers of government power to deliver the necessary second doses in a timely manner.
The Trump administration has withheld millions of doses of vaccine to ensure that people can receive a second injection, which provides maximum protection against COVID-19. It is seen as a prudent approach, since the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines require a second injection after the first vaccination.
But a recent scientific analysis in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine estimated that a “flexible” approach more or less analogous to what Biden is talking about could prevent an additional 23% to 29% of COVID-19 cases when compared to the “fixed” strategy. “The Trump administration is following. This is assuming a steady supply of vaccine.
After a glimmer of hope when the first vaccines were approved last month, the country’s vaccination campaign got off to a slow start. Of the 21.4 million doses distributed, about 5.9 million were administered, or just under 28%, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Biden expressed his dissatisfaction with the progress of vaccinations.
“I think the way it is being done now has been very, very sad,” he said at a news conference on Friday.
The Trump Administration’s “Operation Speed Warp” delivered vaccines to the states, he said, “but did not remove them from these vials in people’s arms,” he continued. “And therefore, it is a huge logistical concern for how we do this.”
Biden says he intends to speed up vaccines by making the federal government deliver more vaccines and play a stronger role in ensuring they are administered.
The American Hospital Association estimates that the country would need to vaccinate 1.8 million people a day, every day, from January 1 to May 31, to achieve the goal of having widespread immunity by summer. This is also called “herd immunity” and would involve vaccinating at least 75% of the population.
Biden set a goal to manage 100 million kicks in the first 100 days of his administration. He said earlier that he and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris have been talking to state and local leaders about how to gear government efforts at all levels. Among the specifics: opening vaccination posts and sending mobile vaccine units to communities that are difficult to access.
Biden’s adviser Rick Bright says that Trump’s administration approach does not take the last step in ensuring that injections are administered. “The main thing is that there is no coordinated national plan,” Bright told the Associated Press. Bright has a doctorate in immunology and headed a government biodefense agency until his resignation last year, in what he says is retaliation for warning the Trump administration that the country was not prepared for a pandemic.
Biden’s transition office said its experts believe that distributing the available vaccine as soon as possible will not create problems for people who need their second dose. Biden will make wider use of a Cold War-era law to direct private industry to supply materials for vaccine production, should this become necessary, his office said. One-shot vaccines are advancing in development.
Former Chief of the Food and Drug Administration, Mark McClellan, said he agreed with Biden’s decision, but the increased supply of vaccines must go hand in hand with measures to actually deliver the vaccines.
“We are withholding more doses than we really need,” said McClellan in an interview. But “it needs to be combined with steps to increase vaccine delivery, or it won’t make much difference.” McClellan, who served in the government of former Republican President George W. Bush, now heads a health policy center at Duke University.
Biden announced his plan after eight Democratic governors wrote to the Trump administration on Friday asking him to do the same.
“The federal government currently has more than 50% of vaccines produced currently withheld,” wrote the governors. “While some of these life-saving vaccines are in Pfizer’s freezers, our country is losing 2,661 Americans each day, according to the last seven-day average. Failure to distribute these doses to states requesting them is unfair and unacceptable. We demand that the federal government begin to distribute these doses reserved to the states immediately. “
The letter was signed by Govs. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, Gavin Newsom of California, Laura Kelly of Kansas, JB Pritzker of Illinois, Tim Walz of Minnesota, Andrew Cuomo of New York, Jay Inslee of Washington and Tony Evers of Wisconsin.
With the winter wave of the pandemic taking deaths to record levels and overburdened hospitals in cities large and small, some have asked the government to authorize the use of only one dose of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines. This would actually confer an increase in immunity.
However, government scientists, including Dr. Anthony Fauci, said the vaccines should continue to be used as prescribed in their emergency approval by the FDA. The two-dose regimen provides about 95% protection.
More than 365,000 Americans died as a result of the pandemic, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. The seven-day average positivity rate for the country has continued to rise since Christmas, and stood at 13.6% on Thursday, according to the COVID Tracking Project. This is well above the 10% rate considered a generalized contagion marker.
Biden’s spokesman Ducklo said the president-elect will share additional details next week.
Biden’s plan to change the vaccine distribution plan was first reported by CNN.
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This history has been corrected to show that 21.4 million doses of the vaccine were distributed, not 29.4 million.
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AP reporter Michelle R. Smith in Providence, RI contributed to this report.
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