Here’s what leadership on vaccination would look like https://www.washingtonpost.com/opin...-what-leadership-vaccination-would-look-like/ Of the 13.1 million doses of coronavirus vaccine distributed thus far, only 32 percent — about 4.2 million — have been administered. The alarming delay is largely due to the Trump administration’s lack of leadership. The administration seems to believe its responsibility ends once vaccines are shipped to states. But that’s wrong. Here’s what the federal government should do to infuse urgency into the vaccination efforts. Set expectations for an all-hands-on-deck, 24/7 operation. With thousands of Americans dying every day, there is no excuse for lifesaving vaccines languishing in freezers. The federal government needs to give states strict parameters for when their vaccine allocation must be administered before it’s diverted elsewhere. States, in turn, should impose similar requirements to their distribution sites: Use it, or lose it. Some have attributed delays to the holidays and initial logistical challenges, but plenty of entities have run efficient operations. In West Virginia, all 214 long-term care facilities have completed delivering their first dose of their vaccinations. Some hospitals in Texas provided shots around-the-clock until all employees received them. The federal government can highlight best practices and emphasize that vaccines are a lifeboat that many are desperate to access. Establish targets and help locales meet them. The federal government should set ambitious targets for each region and ask state and local health departments what they need to reach them. Let’s say a region’s goal is to vaccinate 10,000 residents per day by March 1. What will it take to do this? The stimulus package just passed by Congress will provide many needed resources, but it’s coming months later than it should. How can the federal government provide support in the meantime? For example, if it’s too difficult for local health departments to maintain all their other pandemic operations on top of scaling up a vaccination program, can the National Guard take over testing? If there are vulnerable residents in hard-to-reach areas, can the federal government supply and staff mobile vans? Recruit an army of vaccinators. It makes no sense to have already exhausted hospital workers take on the job of vaccinating their communities. Instead, we should be enlisting community health workers, retired health professionals, and medical, nursing and dental students. It’s much more efficient to have the federal government work through national associations than each state figuring out recruitment on their own. The federal government can also remove licensing barriers and cover liability protection to quickly deploy this workforce. Pilot mass vaccinations in select cities. Rather than distributing vaccines solely on a per-capita basis, the federal government should identify cities and counties that can immediately launch mass vaccination programs. New York City, for example, has one of the most well-funded public health systems in the country. Its mayor, Bill de Blasio, has said the city can vaccinate a million people by the end of January. The federal government can select, say, 10 regions with the highest likelihood of success. Give them a month to distribute a million doses each. To those who say it’s not fair to favor areas that already have more resources: This is not the time for the lowest common denominator. There are other ways to aim for equity, for example, by allocating the next round of funding based on the federal government’s social vulnerability index. Let the pilot cities work through the roadblocks and write the playbook for everyone else. Build community vaccination centers. The last place that vaccinations should be done are overcrowded hospitals. Existing pharmacies and clinics will also not provide the scale and speed that’s needed. Germany has already set up dozens of mass vaccination centers capable of inoculating thousands every day. Italy has established pop-up vaccination pavilions. Some states have plans to do this, too. The federal government can expedite this process of repurposing stadiums, athletic fields and parking lots. Streamline processes. Getting the shot takes seconds; it’s the paperwork that takes time. Why not require the paperwork be completed in advance? Imagine if everyone who wants to be vaccinated must first watch an informational video, complete an online registration form and sign a consent form. Those with questions could call a phone hotline. Everyone would then be told when and where to show up. When they arrive, the only thing they need to do is to get the shot. (Those without online access can have phone or in-person registration options.) Israel has designed an app that accomplishes exactly this purpose. That’s partly why Israel has already vaccinated 11 percent of its population, including 41 percent of those over 60. Developing a safe, effective vaccine was a moonshot. Now, we need a similar all-out effort to turn vaccines into vaccinations. We are at war with the virus, and it’s time for the federal government to step up to lead a wartime mobilization. This is our best hope for ending the pandemic, and the American people deserve nothing less.
2/3 of the vaccines are still sitting on shelves (in freezers) because the same people in charge of giving vaccinations are the same people being overwhelmed by the recent Covid-19 surging cases that's overwhelming hospitals. Thousands more will die and thousands more will become seriously ill because they will soon be infected with Covid-19 while vaccines are sitting unused on shelves (in freezers). Ugly Crazy Hopefully Biden / Harris administration will create National Vaccination centers thats managed by the military medical personnel because states public/private hospitals are just too overwhelmed right now to be able to do it alone. wrbtrader
I'm sure Biden will do better. Trump has systematically replaced competent, experienced government personnel with inexperienced, incompetent yes-clowns. Bet your bottom dollar that these roadblocks will be removed once Trump is kicked out.
Germany mulls delaying second COVID-19 vaccine shot, Denmark approves delay https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-health-coronavirus-vaccines-germany-idUKKBN2991Q3 Germany was weighing on Monday whether to allow a delay in administering a second dose of the COVID-19 vaccine from BioNTech and Pfizer to make scarce supplies go further, after a similar move by Britain last week. Separately, Denmark approved on Monday a delay of up to six weeks between the first and second shots of the vaccine. In Berlin, the health ministry was seeking the view of an independent vaccination commission on whether to delay a second shot beyond a current 42-day maximum limit, according to a one-page document seen by Reuters on Monday. The move came amid criticism of Health Minister Jens Spahn - including from his conservative political allies - that Germany has failed to procure enough vaccines and been too slow to ramp up its national inoculation campaign. Spahn told his Christian Democratic Union at a closed-door meeting on Monday that he hoped to offer vaccinations by this summer to everyone in Germany, once more vaccines have won regulatory approval, according to sources who attended. Some German health experts have welcomed Britain’s move to delay administering a second dose of the BioNTech/Pfizer shot, which comes as governments try to provide protection against coronavirus to as many people as possible by giving them one shot and delaying a second. “In view of the current scarcity of vaccines and the very high numbers of infections and hospitalisations (in Germany), a strategy in which as many people as possible are vaccinated as early as possible is more effective,” said Leif-Erik Sander, head of the vaccine research team at Berlin’s Charité hospital. However, BioNTech and Pfizer pointed in a joint statement to a lack of trial data to support delaying the second dose. “The safety and efficacy of the vaccine has not been evaluated on different dosing schedules as the majority of trial participants received the second dose within the window specified in the study design,” the companies said, referring to a prime shot and a booster given three weeks apart. “There is no data to demonstrate that protection after the first dose is sustained after 21 days.” The European Medicines Agency said a maximum interval of 42 days between the first and the second shot of the Pfizer-BioNtech vaccine should be respected to obtain full protection. According to the latest daily update from the Robert Koch Institute, Germany has vaccinated around 239,000 people since starting its campaign on Dec. 27 - well short of the 1.3 million doses that were delivered by the end of 2020. By way of comparison, Britain has administered more than a million COVID-19 vaccines so far, more than the rest of Europe put together, Health Minister Matt Hancock said. DANISH MOVE The Danish Health Authority will allow a wait of up to six weeks before administering a second dose, its head Soren Brostrom told local news wire Ritzau on Monday, after scrutinising vaccine data. But Brostrom said the original guidelines of waiting only three to four weeks should be followed whenever possible. “If you go longer than six weeks, we cannot see the scientific evidence that you are protected with certainty. Therefore we cannot recommend that,” Brostrom added. As of Monday, a total of 46,975 Danes had received the first Pfizer-BioNTech shot, mostly health workers and the elderly. While a longer interval between shots has not been tested in clinical trials, some scientists said it was a sensible plan given the extraordinary circumstances. European Union approval for a vaccine from Moderna, expected this week, should add another 1.5 million doses of supply in the coming weeks, the German Health Ministry document said. In total, Germany, which has around 83 million people, should get 50 million doses of the Moderna shot this year under EU-wide procurement contracts. Regarding the AstraZeneca vaccine approved last week by Britain, the German Health Ministry said the European Medicines Agency’s rolling review was proceeding at “high pressure”. “The goal is, as soon as possible, to decide on the way forward and on the scope of approval” for the AstraZeneca vaccine, the document said. Additional reporting by Jacob Gronholt-Pedersen in Copenhagen; writing by Douglas Busvine and Josephine Mason; editing by Thomas Seythal, Maria Sheahan and Gareth Jones
Were you not the fear mongering SOB blaming Trump and DeSantis for vaccine supply issues. Your model country is having similar issues.
The response to this is easy. Please link to the post where I blamed Trump or DeSantis for supply issues and not distribution issues.
Indonesia says screw the old people let them die.... Indonesia choosing to vaccinate working adults before the elderly https://www.cbsnews.com/news/indonesia-covid-vaccine-working-adults-before-elderly/ Indonesia has announced plans to give the COVID-19 vaccine to working-age adults ahead of the elderly. While the U.S. is prioritizing vaccines for health care workers and the elderly, Indonesia has a reason for vaccinating younger people first. The aim is to reach herd immunity and revive the economy by vaccinating working people next after frontline health workers and public servants, Reuters reports. Indonesia is using a vaccine developed by China's Sinovac Biotech. The country will also receive shipments of the Pfizer vaccine and the vaccine by AstraZeneca and Oxford University later this year, according to Reuters. As for the choice to vaccine younger adults before the elderly, Peter Collignon, professor of infectious diseases at Australian National University, told Reuters that Indonesia's strategy could slow the spread of COVID-19 but might not affect mortality rates. "Indonesia doing it different to the U.S. and Europe is of value, because it will tell us (whether) you'll see a more dramatic effect in Indonesia than Europe or U.S. because of the strategy they're doing," he said, adding, "I don't think anybody knows the answer." Professor Dale Fisher from the Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine at the National University of Singapore said he sees merit in both strategies. "Younger working adults are generally more active, more social and travel more so this strategy should decrease community transmission faster than vaccinating older individuals," he told Reuters. "Of course, older people are more at risk of severe disease and death, so vaccinating those has an alternative rationale." Another contributing factor to Indonesia's strategy is that the Sinovac vaccine was tested in clinical trials on people between the ages of 18 and 59, and there isn't enough data yet on the vaccine's efficacy on elderly people, according to Reuters. Countries like the U.S. and U.K. have begun immunizations with vaccines developed by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna, which were shown to work well in in people of all ages. Since the elderly are most vulnerable to serious illness and death from COVID-19, seniors are the first age group set to receive vaccinations in the U.S. and U.K. after frontline health care workers. However, in the U.S. there has been a lag in administering vaccines so far. The Trump administration made an initial pledge to vaccinate 20 million Americans by the end of 2020, but the CDC reports only about 4.5 million people have received their first dose as of January 2, out of about 15 million doses that have shipped. And while prioritization tiers have been laid out in federal and state guidelines, there were some early delays in deploying the vaccine to long-term care facilities. Nursing homes have suffered some of the deadliest COVID-19 outbreaks in the country, with over 127,000 coronavirus deaths at such facilities in 2020, according to The COVID Tracking Project. As of December, nursing homes accounted for as much as 40% of U.S. deaths from the virus. On CBS's "Face The Nation" Sunday, Dr. Scott Gottlieb, former head of the Food and Drug Administration, urged officials to make the vaccines more broadly available to people ages 65 and older to accelerate the pace of vaccinations. "Make the vaccine more generally available through the retail pharmacies, through Walmart and Walgreens and CVS to a broader population, to a general population starting with age," Gottlieb said. "We can walk it down the age continuum, make it available for 75 and above first, then 70 and above, and 65 and above," he continued. "There's 50 million Americans 65 and above, a large percentage of them probably want to be vaccinated. At some point, we need to allow supply to meet demand here and get the shots into the arms of the people who really want to get vaccinated and are going to go out and seek out the vaccination."
There is a lot of Chinese influence- in fact, mostly Chinese influence- behind the roll out of chinese vaccines in Indonesia, Malaysia, Brazil, etc. These are thinly tested, no-transparency vaccines that mostly got unloaded on to the Chinese military as guinea pigs and now China wants to expand them out into the rest of the world. Consequently it has cut massive low-cost to no-cost deals with these countries as a way of getting acceptability going. None of them have been tested on older folks- that is not an interest of the Chinese. Everything they do is a strategic weapon either economically or militarily. Keeping elderly from dying is not even close to being on their mind, and since they cut these sweatheart deals with these countries to showcase their vaccine in areas that they want it showcased. Let's just say that what they want tends to get translated out into the field. The Indonesians are scheduled to get some Moderna and Pfizer vaccines later in the year, that have in fact been tested in the elderly. They will use that as their excuse for doing nothing for now. The commies want to keep military and economic dependencies strengthened through their vaccines. Let the Americans do that elderly and skin color priority stuff. It's what they do. Or so goes the argument. Ditto for the Ruskies and their motives and their marginally-tested vaccine shiite. One of China's goals is to get one of their many vaccines approved by COVAX which is WHO'S vaccine alliance and approval process. Then get the U.S back into funding WHO. This is assured under Biden. Then the U.S. will be funding the sale and development of Chinese vaccines worldwide. They are good at what they do.