The United States rollout of the coronavirus vaccine has been anything but smooth,
Pfizer's vaccine rollout has hit a major snag.
Look, it's a logistical Rubik's cube.
Let's face it. If the Average Joe like us that needs themcan't get, who is getting them.
Was there a plan? Was there really a plan for distribution?
There were multiple plans and that meant that there were no plans.
As of early February 2021, more than 8% of Americans have received at least one dose of a
vaccine. And there are concerns about disparities when it comes to which Americans have access.
The Kaiser Family Foundation tracked data from 16 states that are reporting the races of vaccine
recipients and found people of color were receiving the vaccine at much lower rates than white
Americans. This is especially concerning since nonwhite Americans are at higher risk for contracting the
virus. The U.S.
is still ahead of most European countries when it comes to its rollout, but experts say the process has been
moving too slowly.
In comparison, Israel's Covid vaccine rollout has been the fastest in the world.
As of early February 2021, more than 35 percent of its population has been vaccinated.
Unlike the U.S., Israel established a national vaccination registry, which makes record-keeping a
lot easier. Israel, though, is facing growing criticism for excluding Palestinians from its
vaccination efforts.
The United States took a more decentralized approach to its rollout, which has left states to develop
distribution plans on their own.
And it's causing some problems.
Here's what went wrong with the U.S.
coronavirus vaccine rollout and how a new White House plans to turn things around.
On May 15th, 2020, the Trump administration launched Operation Warp Speed to accelerate
development, production and distribution of Covid-19 vaccines.
Its goal was to have 20 million Americans vaccinated by the end of 2020.
But once it came time to get shots into people's arms, the Trump administration turned the reins over to the
states. This meant state and local health officials were left to piece together a massively complicated
rollout operation without federal guidance or additional resources.
That really requires an assembly line like set up.
It requires several weeks of planning.
It requires making sure the complex storage is connected to individuals at the other end of the
process. And for places that don't have all of that infrastructure and that expertise, they really need more
technical assistance from the federal government and unfortunately, Operation Warp Speed only really seemed
to focus on the science and ultimately the development and approval of these vaccines, but not the
logistics around distribution and administration.
When the rollout began in December 2012, state and local officials ran into a slew of logistical
issues, and many locations lack the resources to distribute vaccines smoothly.
In many states, they have just hacked away at local public health budgets to the point where
people are using fax machines and Windows 98 to try and communicate and to
log their data.
The rollout also began over the holiday season, which led to more complications, especially surrounding
limited staffing.
The growing pains led to some high profile mistakes.
In December 2020, 42 people in West Virginia were accidentally given a monoclonal antibody
treatment for coronavirus rather than the vaccine mistake that the West Virginia National Guard, the
organization leading the state's rollout, called a "breakdown in the process."
Many state and local leaders now say that their distribution operations have gotten more efficient since
the rollout began. In fact, West Virginia has become one of the leading states in the country when it comes
to vaccinations.
Even though states have begun ironing out logistical issues, they are still facing another big problem.
They don't have enough vaccines.
The biggest challenge we face right now here is supply of the vaccine, we just can't get it.
There's no question we have an enormous supply demand imbalance.
23,000 people couldn't get a vaccination because the supply didn't arrive.
If you take the calculation of what the county is getting each week and you just look at the number of
health care workers and seniors, we won't get through them until June.
The issue surrounding vaccine supplies started a few weeks into the rollout when state officials said the
federal government unexpectedly slashed the number of Pfizer vaccine doses the White House had told them to
expect. The Department of Health and Human Services said states had confused the initial numbers the
government had provided them with the actual allotment the states were going to receive.
HHS said the initial numbers were meant for planning purposes only and were not exact figures.
This forced states to scramble and come up with new plans.
On January 12th, 2021, the CDC expanded its Covid vaccine guidelines, suggesting states
allow everyone 65 years and older to receive a vaccine.
As a result, more than half of states expanded eligibility, increasing demand, while still having
incredibly limited supply.
The Trump administration then said it would release all of the vaccine doses the government had been holding in
reserve. But The Washington Post reported that the vaccine reserve had already been exhausted when the
administration made that announcement.
Governors and local officials around the country said the lack of supply forced them to cancel vaccination
appointments that people had made in advance.
The Biden administration announced on January 26, 2021, that the federal government was working to
purchase an additional 200 million vaccine doses from Pfizer and Moderna in order to get nearly
every American fully inoculated by the summertime.
There's also hope for Johnson & Johnson single shot vaccine candidate, which released promising results from
its clinical trials on January 29th, 2021.
A single shot vaccine would make logistics much easier and could seriously speed up the process.
But there's still the issue of locating the vaccine supply that's currently missing around the country, and
that will be a key challenge for the Biden administration.
We are working closely with General Perna, with the manufacturers, with the states to
understand exactly where the supply is.
Right now I think we still have vaccine on the shelves that we need to get into people.
So we're looking at a rollout plan that will will be diverse so that we can get to all people.
Another big hurdle to mass vaccination is persuading hesitant Americans to take the
vaccine. A survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that about a quarter of Americans either don't
want to get vaccinated or remain on the fence about it.
The survey also found that Republicans and black Americans were among the most hesitant groups.
The sentiment is not just in the U.S.
More than 35 percent of people in France and Poland say they don't plan to get the vaccine once it
becomes available, according to a YouGov study published in January 20 21.
Most of those polled said the main reason they won't take the vaccine is because they wanted to wait
to see if it's safe.
I think once we get to 100 million, maybe 120 million vaccines, the demand is going to get soft.
This year, 120 million people got vaccinated for flu adult.
It was an all time record.
Those were people who are worried about getting Covid going out and getting flu vaccines.
That may be the universe of people who really have significant demand for a vaccine.
And so I think we need to also, as we do this, work on the demand side of this equation, we can't lose sight of
that and just take for granted that everyone wants this vaccine.
Vaccine hesitancy is less of an issue at the beginning of a process compared to the setback in the lack
of infrastructure and the supply chain.
But there have already been signs people are unsure about getting the vaccine.
Ohio Governor Mike DeWine said about 60 percent of nursing home workers in his state have
declined to be vaccinated.
He said this was especially concerning considering it would make high risk elderly Americans more
susceptible to contracting the virus.
Vaccine hesitancy comes in numerous different flavors, I will say.
Some people really just need it to be convenient.
Some people need to have permission to take the time to get the vaccine or enough leeway
to be able to take the day off if they're feeling unwell the next day.
Some of it is they just kind of want to see how it's going to go.
Some of it is education.
And what is it that they are what is it that they're hesitant about?
What is the science that they need to understand?
And we need to bring that science to them by their trusted people.
With the vaccine rollout in the United States has been a dismal failure thus far.
Just before he was sworn into office, President Joe Biden announced the administration's national strategy
to combat the pandemic.
He set a target of administering 100 million doses within the first 100 days of his presidency and
hopes to institute a $20 billion national vaccination program to help accomplish it.
Biden says he will deploy FEMA and the National Guard to work with state and local officials to build mass
vaccination clinics across the country, as well as deploy mobile units to rural and underserved
areas. He also says he plans to make the vaccine available free of charge, regardless of a person's
immigration status, and help strengthen data systems and transparency surrounding the vaccination process.
Experts are hopeful that the slow initial rollout could be turned around once the systems and supply
confusion are sorted out.
Massive deployment like this often goes through a phase where we learn the mistakes, learn how to
make the operations work.
And it's very common in massive deployments to have this sort of period where things look relatively flat.
You get very concerned and then it takes off because if you have multiple sites or one site figures that out, a
lot of others are doing it at the same time.