Vaccine News Roundup


Today's vaccine news roundup begins with a plan by President-elect Biden to release vaccine supplies currently being held back for second doses.  The idea is to get the vaccine into as many arms as soon as possible, as the first dose conveys significant immunity, at least with the Pfizer BioNTech vaccine.  They would then count on the supply chain to ramp up production to meet the need for second doses.

When I first heard about this, it struck me as a risky idea given what we've heard about the difficulty of scaling up production of the new-technology vaccines.  But there have been recent reports about efforts at Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna to do so.  There are also reports that Biden plans to invoke the Defense Production Act to accelerate the process, something that should have been done months ago.

Just this morning there is word that the outgoing Trump administration has changed policy and will release existing stockpiles. If this is a good idea for Biden then it's a good idea for Trump, and maybe they are just trying the save Biden the trouble.  But I can't help but wonder if there is some hidden agenda here, like upstaging Biden or depleting the vaccine supply sooner so second doses are less likely to materialize in time, making Biden look bad.  Nothing would surprise me.  

Whatever the case, as we have learned just shipping vaccines doesn't mean they will quickly get into arms.  Some states are struggling to do everything that needs doing to manage the pandemic. An Emory University researcher was quoted as saying, 

I'm talking to public health departments that tell me we can do testing or we can do vaccinations — we don't have the people to do both.  We need more vaccinators.  Nobody thought to build out the capacity to give the shots. Now we need national leadership to do that.

How nobody could have anticipated the need for vaccinators is a little beyond me.

One place they are good at getting shots into arms is Israel.  According to a PBS Newshour story, they lead the world in administering vaccines, having delivered "over 1.5 million" doses.  According to current population estimates that is 17.2%, or slightly more than one in six.  

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Arizona is finally doing something to ramp up delivery, having established a mass vaccination center at State Farm Stadium. This sounds like a good idea, and certainly the Cardinals won't been needing that stadium for playoff games.

On the other hand, it's not clear how it will accelerate vaccinations.  According to the governor's statement, the state already has 180 vaccination sites that have delivered 123,862 doses.  Based on current state population estimates that is only 1.66% of Arizonans.  

So with a population about the same size as Israel, we have delivered an order-of-magnitude fewer vaccinations.  As noted in an earlier post we are the third-worst in the nation on this count.  No doubt we are facing the shortage of vaccinators mentioned earlier, and a solution to that problem is not mentioned in the Governor's release.

Also, the web site Maricopa County set up for making appointments crashed yesterday after is was opened-up for group 1B vaccinations.  This is predictable, but is it understandable?  Who could have known there would be huge demand for appointment sign-ups?  How could this have been avoided with only ten months to prepare? 

Image: A vaccination site in Tel Aviv, from PBS Newshour


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