Vaccine program hits a few speed bumps
Logistics and other planning gaps account for about 8 million doses distributed to states but not yet made available to healthcare workers or others at risk. Meantime, virus death toll climbs faster.
More than 327,500 families have empty seats at their holiday tables due to COVID-19 deaths this year. For more data, check out the Johns Hopkins 60-second briefing. We are losing more than 3,000 people a day.
"Exactly how fast the ramp-up of immunizations – shots in arms – is happening is slower than we thought it would be,” said Moncef Slaoui, chief adviser to the government’s Operation Warp Speed in a briefing Tuesday afternoon. In some cases, sites do not yet have enough people trained to administer the shots, and consent forms required for the vaccine’s emergency use mean that healthcare workers getting vaccinated are away from their work longer. Of 9 million doses distributed so far, about 1 million shots have been administered. The federal government’s goal of distributing 20 million doses by the end of the year will be missed by about a week, according to OWS.
Texas, Florida and Massachusetts are the first states to deviate from the CDC’s guidelines for COVID vaccine priorities. In many instances, firefighters, police officers and emergency medical technicians are being moved up to the top tier. Health departments also are advising hospitals to include individuals outside of the top priority group if their supply of available vaccine exceeds demand by the top tier groups. Surveys and anecdotal reports from individual hospitals indicate considerable resistance to accepting the vaccinations by nurses in many places.
Get ready for a surge on top of the current surge. One analyst forecasts 12-15 million Americans are traveling between December 15 and January 3, and the Transportation Security Administration reported more than 4 million people passed through airport checkpoints between Friday and Monday — the first time since the pandemic’s start that the TSA recorded four days in a row of 1 million or more passengers.
Monoclonal antibody treatments for COVID-19 may be going unused, despite the rapidly increasing number of patients who might need them, according to the New York Times. Some medical centers have set up infusion sites away from their hospitals to facilitate use of these treatments. In addition, some physicians hesitate to prescribe them due to ambiguous data on their long-term efficacy.
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And finally, happy birthday to Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
As we all take a break for the holiday to the extent that we can, please remember:
Wear a mask
Wash your hands
Watch your space
Merry Christmas to those who celebrate, and have a good weekend.