Millions of US vaccine doses sit on ice, putting 2020 goal in doubt

HOSPITALS START SLOWLY BUT SPEED UP

Dr. Saul Weingart, the chief medical officer of Tufts Medical Center in Boston, said the hospital had given about 750 doses of the around 3,000 available as of Friday. It started with 100 shots per day and worked up to about 450, he said.

He said experts at the hospital modeled that giving Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine would take 10 minutes, about two to three times as long as a flu shot, due to the procedures needed because the vaccine is stored in a deep freeze. Patients need to socially distance before and after being given the vaccine and be monitored for allergic reactions.

The United States gives 170 million flu vaccinations each year within a few months, but for the COVID-19 pandemic, the United States must give about three times that number of shots - the Pfizer and Moderna shots are two doses - to reach most Americans by July. At its current pace, the US appears to have the capacity to administer less than a third of the shots that are shipped in a given week, underscoring the gap.

A spokesperson for Houston Methodist, a hospital in Houston, Texas, said it had given 8,300 employees the vaccine as of Monday with about 7,000 doses left from the first shipment.

The University of Southern California's Keck Medicine medical school has vaccinated over 3,000 employees and said it will take six weeks for everyone, similar to its flu vaccination schedule.

States and health departments need federal money to hire staff, from data center workers to track inoculations to call center employees to field questions, said Adriane Casalotti, chief of government and public affairs of the National Association of County and City Health Officials.

The US Congress's current coronavirus aid package sets aside more than $8 billion for vaccine distribution but is delayed.

"You can't hire someone in December and train them up if you don’t know you can pay them in January," Casalotti said.

Reuters