Some states have been slow to order or use allotted vaccine doses

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Sat, 2021-04-10 12:15 — mike kraft

States have been slow to order allotted vaccine doses, spurring calls for new approach Pressure on the federal government to rethink its allocation strategy has mounted as access to immunization expands nationwide but new infections are concentrated in just a handful of states, including Michigan, New York, New Jersey, Florida and Pennsylvania. Isaac Stanley-Becker Washington Post

States have delayed ordering hundreds of thousands of vaccine doses available to them even as coronavirus outbreaks escalate — a sign the nation is moving past its supply pinch and now faces more acute challenges related to demand, staffing and inoculation of hard-to-reach populations.

The question that defined the early weeks of the vaccine rollout was why states were taking so long to administer the doses they got from the federal government. Four months into the effort, what’s most mystifying is the number of states waiting to order all the doses they’ve been allotted, based on their adult populations and the supplies available that week.

When Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) last week asked White House officials if they would consider sending more vaccine doses to her state during a deadly surge, the state appeared not to have ordered 360,000 doses then available — a single-day snapshot that nonetheless puzzled federal officials who advised her to work with experts to make sure Michigan’s supply was being deployed effectively.

Michigan’s chief medical executive, Joneigh Khaldun, said late Friday the doses were almost all quickly drawn down, as state officials explained to the White House, noting the federal government had deposited a large number of doses in the state’s account in anticipation of their later use at a mass vaccination site. She said other doses were being preserved to address a mix-up of first and second doses by some providers.

Michigan wasn’t the only state leaving doses on warehouse shelves. At one point last week, 13 states had more than 100,000 doses apiece available and not ordered, according to a federal official familiar with the figures who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the matter’s sensitivity. Indiana had only pulled down 90 percent of doses available to the state, leaving 306,000 on the shelves. Texas had ordered 95 percent of its share, leaving 673,000 doses temporarily untouched.

The delays have gained notice inside the federal government, where officials have discussed whether performance metrics, including how quickly states are ordering and using their vaccine doses, and getting them to vulnerable groups, should be part of allocation decisions, according to three people familiar with the issue. Any new approach, however, would need sign-off from the White House, which has been at pains to avoid the appearance of penalizing some states while boosting others, including by directing additional doses to virus hot spots.

“The fair and equitable way to distribute the vaccine is based on the adult population by state, tribe and territory,” Jeff Zients, coordinator of the White House’s coronavirus task force, said during a Friday briefing. “That’s how it’s been done. And we will continue to do so. The virus is unpredictable. We don’t know where the next increase in cases could occur.”

Experts argue that four months into the immunization campaign, and with more transmissible variants of the virus spreading throughout the country, states should no longer be encountering bottlenecks preventing them from making use of their full vaccine allotments. ...

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