Federal and state governments must increase the number of healthcare workers qualified to administer vaccine doses in order to achieve the widespread immunity needed to end the pandemic, public health experts say, or else millions of shots could go to waste.
“In a few months from now, I do suspect that we’ll be able to vaccinate a couple million people per day, but … we have to have the personnel,” said Dr. Eric Toner, chief scientist at Johns Hopkins University’s Center for Health Security. “Doing it in the hospitals has been the easy part. It’ll get more complicated when we open up the mass vaccination clinics.”
The coronavirus vaccine distribution process got off to a rocky start in December, when the first doses of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines reached hospital systems across the United States to begin immunizing front-line healthcare workers. The rollout has been marred by delivery delays, miscommunication between states and the federal government, and confused messaging at the state level about the populations eligible for the first round of shots.
Federal health officials have recently instructed states to begin vaccinating other priority groups, such as seniors over 65, if they cannot reach more healthcare workers or nursing home residents to get the shots. As more than 3,200 people were dying on average each day over the past week, unused doses with exceptionally short shelf lives were thrown out.
The Trump administration reversed its earlier policy on Tuesday to hold back half of all available doses so that that recipients of the first doses would be guaranteed the second doses, the same policy proposed by President-elect Joe Biden. As of Tuesday, all vaccine doses will be made available to states.
“It’s wise to let the doses out, but the problem is that the states can’t manage to deliver all the doses they’ve been previously given, and giving them more right now is not going to speed up the process,” Toner said.
States have just begun opening vaccination sites where people who are not confined to nursing homes can go to receive their first shots. For instance, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis established a partnership with Publix pharmacies to begin vaccinating the elderly and people with underlying health conditions. Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker, meanwhile, has finalized plans for the state’s first mass vaccination site, which will be located at Gillette Stadium, where the New England Patriots play their home games.
With larger vaccination sites comes a need for more qualified personnel to give the shots. States with a shortage of healthcare workers, Toner said, should be prepared to amend state medical practicing regulations.
“Allowing dentists and veterinarians and nursing assistants, and various sorts of medical technicians to do vaccinations would increase the pool of people who could volunteer to do this,” Toner said. “You can take somebody who has basic medical knowledge, and in a few hours, you can train them to give a vaccine.”
To date, roughly 9.3 million shots have been administered out of more than 25 million allocated doses, according to data tracking by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The federal government had intended to deliver 20 million shots in arms by the start of 2021 but fell far short of its goal.
While some states, such as North Dakota, South Dakota, West Virginia, and Connecticut, have used up more than 59% of their vaccines, most states have used less than half. For instance, New York and California, coronavirus epicenters, have administered about 43% and 28% of all available shots, respectively.
“By and large, the issue is the fact that they’re not vaccinating fast enough,” said Dr. Hani Mahmassani, the director of the Transportation Center at Northwestern University. “So you can send [states] more product, but it’s just going to sit there.”
Biden has pledged to inoculate 100 million people within his first 100 days in office, an attainable goal as long as the federal government is prepared to assist states in carrying out the vaccinations. For instance, deploying the National Guard to assist with vaccinations could be helpful, Mahmassani said.
“On a federal level, add more resources to the local folks … it seems to me on the local level, they haven’t had enough,” he said. “You know, we’ve had enough advance notice about this that I would have hoped to see better planning, and I’m just not seeing it.”
Nearly 23 million infections and more than 379,000 deaths due to COVID-19 have been confirmed in the U.S. to date.
