US vaccination off to slow start as states struggle without federal plan
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A resident receiving the Moderna Covid-19 vaccine at the King's Point retirement home in Delray Beach, Florida, on Wednesday. Only about 2.8 million Americans had been vaccinated as at Wednesday evening, representing around 13.5 per cent of the authorities' stated goal of immunising 20 million Americans by the end of last year.
PHOTO: BLOOMBERG
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NEW YORK • US health officials acknowledged that a Covid-19 immunisation campaign is crawling out of the starting gate, raising the prospect that the nation's all-in bet on vaccines could be afflicted by the same dysfunction that hobbled measures to contain the pandemic.
Only about 2.8 million Americans had been vaccinated as at Wednesday evening. As the year drew to a close, that represented only about 13.5 per cent of the authorities' stated goal of immunising 20 million Americans by the end of last year
Governments are struggling with complex logistics to keep the shots cold, organising cohorts of people to receive them and persuading those made sceptical by a flood of online disinformation.
"It is another manifestation of a lack of a federal plan with appropriate resources," said Dr Robert Wachter, chairman of the department of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco.
"With each passing day, if vaccines are sitting on shelves waiting to be administered, those are people that will die because of that."
Senior public health officials said the vaccination pace will accelerate as soon as next week.
Nursing homes and other long-term care facilities are likely to get more shots done as the holidays recede, said Dr Nancy Messonnier of the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
States are improvising new delivery systems and rewriting priorities for who should get shots first.
Colorado said on Wednesday it would vaccinate people aged 70 and older, joining Texas and Florida in trying to quickly immunise older residents - though federal guidelines favour health workers.
Professor Julie Swann, a supply-chain expert at North Carolina State University, said that prioritising groups for initial shots is an impediment.
"We have multiple competing objectives, and it is hard to satisfy them simultaneously," she said.
Federal officials said they will assess what is working and what needs to be adjusted.
General Gustave Perna, leader of the logistics effort, said: "Here is what I have confidence in: Every day, everybody gets better, and I believe that uptake will increase significantly as we go forward."
President-elect Joe Biden has said the administration is failing to protect Americans, and has promised 100 million inoculations in his first 100 days if Congress provides funding. But President Donald Trump made clear in a Wednesday tweet that he believes local officials are in charge, telling states: "Get moving!"
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said the massive undertaking has been "grossly underestimated". Ohio Governor Mike DeWine chastised providers for moving slowly.
Many Americans are uncertain if they will get a shot from their doctor, at a government clinic or at a pharmacy. It is also unclear how government officials will verify eligibility. Some states and cities have launched websites where residents can sign up to be vaccinated.
Texas this week opened up vaccination to seniors aged at least 65 and people over 16 with an increased risk for severe illness.
Governor Greg Abbott in a tweet urged vaccine providers to quickly use shots because a "significant portion" may be going unused.
Dr Wachter, the California medical professor, said states are making it up as they go.
"These are big, complex undertakings to get materials out to millions of people, thousands of places, and they really do require federal coordination, federal programmes and federal dollars behind them," he said. "If you don't, you have everybody doing improv(isation), and it just doesn't work very well."
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