Some states say Pfizer’s vaccine allocations are lowered for next week

Several states say they have been told to expect significantly fewer doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine in its second week of distribution, raising concerns about possible vaccine delays for healthcare workers and care residents. long-term.

But senior Trump administration officials on Thursday downplayed the risk of delays, citing confusion over semantics, while Pfizer said its production levels have not changed.

The first American doses were administered on Monday, and already this week, hundreds of thousands of people, mostly healthcare workers, have been vaccinated. The pace is expected to pick up next week, assuming Moderna gets federal clearance for its vaccine.

Efforts to help prevent the coronavirus come amid a staggering death toll that topped 300,000 on Monday. Johns Hopkins University says that around 2,400 people die daily in the US, representing an average of more than 210,000 cases per day.

In recent days, governors and health leaders in more than a dozen states have said that the federal government has told them that the shipment of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for next week will be less than originally projected.

Few explanations were offered, puzzling many state officials.

“This is disturbing and frustrating,” Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, a Democrat, wrote on Twitter Thursday after learning from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that the state allocation would be cut by 40%. “We need accurate and predictable numbers to plan and ensure success on the ground.”

California, where an explosion of cases is pushing intensive care units to the limit, will receive 160,000 fewer vaccine doses than state officials had anticipated next week, a reduction of about 40%.

California hospitals began vaccinations this week from Pfizer’s first shipment of 327,000 doses and expected even more to arrive next week. Instead, officials have been told that they expect about 233,000 doses, said Erin Mellon, a spokeswoman for Gov. Gavin Newsom.

Missouri Health Director Dr. Randall Williams said his state will get 25% to 30% less vaccine next week than expected. A statement from the Iowa Department of Public Health said his allocation “will be reduced by up to 30%; however, we are working to obtain confirmation and additional details from our federal partners.”

Michigan shipping will be cut by about a quarter. Connecticut, Georgia, Illinois, Kansas, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire and Indiana have also been told to expect smaller shipments.

“States need clear and accurate updates and information from the federal government as we continue the large and complex process of distributing this critical COVID-19 vaccine across the country and here in Nevada,” said Democratic state governor Steve Sisolak in a statement. after his state’s second allocation was reduced by 42% to 17,550 doses. “Reducing state allocations, without explanation, is disturbing and disconcerting.”

Hawaii’s health department said that up to 40% of its doses will be delayed, but it still expects to receive about 46,000 doses by the end of the month.

Gov. Brian Kemp said Thursday that Georgia is set to receive 60,000 doses next week after initially waiting for 99,000. Still, the Republican governor has received little praise for the vaccination effort and did not strongly oppose the decrease in numbers.

“I wish it was a lot more, but it could be zero right now if you look at the past history of vaccines,” Kemp said.

In Washington, DC, two senior Trump administration officials who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal planning said states will receive their full allocations, but misunderstandings about vaccine supply and changes to the delivery schedule may be creating confusion.

One official said the initial number of available doses that were provided to states were projections based on information from manufacturers, not fixed allocations. Some state officials may have misunderstood that, the official said.

The two officials also said that changes the federal government made to the delivery schedule, at the request of governors, may be contributing to a mistaken impression that fewer doses are arriving. The key change involves spacing the delivery of weekly state assignments over several days to make the distribution more manageable.

“They will get their weekly allowance, it just won’t come a day,” an official said.

Pfizer made it clear that when it comes to production, nothing has changed.

“Pfizer has had no production issues with our COVID-19 vaccine, and no shipments containing the vaccine are on hold or delayed,” spokesperson Eamonn Nolan said in an email. “We continue to ship our orders to the locations specified by the United States government.”

The company said in a written statement that this week it “successfully shipped the 2.9 million doses that the US government asked us to ship to the locations specified by them. We have millions more doses in our warehouse but As of now, we have not received any additional dose shipping instructions. “

Senior administration officials said that Pfizer’s statement on doses awaiting shipping instructions, while technically accurate, conveniently omits the explanation: It was planned that way.

Federal officials said Pfizer promised to provide 6.4 million doses of its vaccine in the first week after approval. But the federal Operation Warp Speed ​​had already planned to distribute just 2.9 million of those doses right away. Another 2.9 million were to be held in the Pfizer warehouse to ensure that people vaccinated the first week could receive their second injection later for the protection to be fully effective. Finally, the government maintains an additional 500,000 doses as a reserve for unforeseen problems.

Pfizer said it remains confident that it can deliver up to 50 million doses globally this year and up to 1.3 billion doses in 2021.

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