COVID-19 Update

World

New Cases:   441,563 (⬆︎ .41%)
New Deaths:    13,047 (⬆︎ .55%)

USA

New Cases:   103,481 (⬆︎ .37%)
New Deaths:      3,068 (⬆︎ .63%)

Vaccination Scorecard

Total Vaccinations:          35.4 million
Total Priority Population: 28.7%
Total Population:             10.7%

Team Biden announced the other day that they'd finished up a procurement deal that will eventually stock up enough COVID-19 vaccine doses to cover all 330+ million Americans.

Eventually.

Meanwhile, I've been online every day for a week now trying to get my vaccination appointment, and the site is so jammed with traffic, it doesn't work very well, and when I do get thru, they tell me they don't have the doses available and "please try again later".

The health district I live in is supposed to be in Phase 1B now, which includes old guys like me, but they can't keep up with demand.

They just don't have the goods yet.

WaPo: (pay wall)

The first precious boxloads of the frozen elixir arrived in December, bearing great promise for curtailing the pandemic that has paralyzed the region and the world.

Nurses and firefighters got injections on live TV. Some of them cried. Watching at home, many hopeful people cried, too.

But in the weeks that followed, that hope was mixed with frustration, then anger, as it became clear that getting the potentially lifesaving vaccine would not be easy — not nationally, and not in the District, Maryland and Virginia.

Hospitals in D.C. and Virginia scheduled appointments, then canceled or postponed them. Maryland residents registered at vaccination clinics in Prince George’s County, only to see rules created overnight that barred them from getting their shots. Govs. Larry Hogan of Maryland and Ralph Northam of Virginia and D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser announced that millions of people were eligible. But when those people called and emailed and waited in front of their computers for hours, they couldn’t get through.

What went wrong? The story of how the region’s governments left millions of residents confused and fearful as officials took on the most important public health challenge in decades is a tale of a complicated and faltering chain of command, in which Hogan (R), Bowser (D) and Northam (D) acted on bad information and changing directives from the federal government, and local leaders scrambled to respond to late-arriving and shifting guidance from the states.

This account, based on 30 interviews with government officials and hospital and medical workers, shows how public health officials battered by months of fighting the pandemic were caught unprepared for the arrival of the vaccine that could stop it in its tracks.

...

Obviously, COVID-19 is a national problem, but there was no national plan, and Qult45 was intent on not allowing guidance from CDC or NIH that had any coherence or consistency.

So first, the Libertarian Paradise of "everybody just takes care of themselves" is laid bare and shown to be the fucking nightmare we knew it would turn out to be if allowed to propagate. Just sayin' - fuck those guys.

And second, Biden and his merry band of technocrats have had to build the thing on the fly. They deserve a little wagon room while they crank this shit up.

Reuters:

Dose shortages undermine push by U.S. states to speed COVID-19 vaccinations

When the U.S. government began shipping COVID-19 vaccines in December, state health providers could not administer shots fast enough to keep pace with deliveries and millions of doses sat waiting for arms.

Two months later, the situation has reversed. Supply constraints are slowing ambitious vaccination programs, as massive sites capable of putting shots into thousands of arms daily in states including New York, California, Florida and Texas, as well as hospitals and pharmacies, beg for more doses.

Nearly a dozen state and local officials told Reuters they could vaccinate up to four times more people, but federal vaccine shipments remain frustratingly small.

Two months into the vaccine rollout, most states have received enough doses to vaccinate fewer than 10% of their residents. With deliveries based on population, most states receive fewer than a 100,000 doses per week of the Pfizer Inc/BioNTech SE and Moderna Inc vaccines that both require two shots.

States and localities “have gotten themselves together ... and they can handle a lot more doses,” said Claire Hannan, director of the Association of Immunization Managers, a trade group for local public health departments. “They just need more supply.”

Health officials say the stakes are higher than ever as more contagious variants of the coronavirus spread.

The Biden administration has said it will continue to increase dose allocations and remains on track to make shots available to all Americans by late summer.

Despite the frustration, the United States is a global leader in vaccinations, with around 66 million doses shipped and nearly 45 million shots administered.

SLOW RAMP UP

Weekly dose shipments have increased to 11 million from 8.6 million since Biden took control of the White House Jan. 20, and may increase to around 13 million by the end of the month. Officials said they cannot project out more than three weeks but are working to improve supply visibility.

At that pace, the administration could hit its goal of distributing 100 million shots in its first 100 days nearly a month ahead of schedule, and hit a target of 150 million shots without any increase in weekly dose allocations.

Some experts said the United States has the potential to distribute 220 million doses or more by the end of March. Pfizer and Moderna have contracts to deliver those shots, and a third vaccine from Johnson & Johnson could be authorized by the end of this month or early March.

Biden promised to help states ramp up vaccinations with an assist from the military and government agencies after his predecessor largely left them to their own devices.

Federal data shows that vaccines shipped have consistently exceeded shots given by around 20 million doses for over a month. White House officials said the discrepancy was largely due to states holding back doses to ensure people get their second shot on schedule.

The Biden administration has helped set up two mass vaccination sites in California and is urging Congress to provide funds for more. It has also started shipping vaccines directly to 6,500 pharmacies around the country and will launch a similar program next week with community health centers.

‘WISH WE COULD DO MORE’

State and local officials told Reuters what is holding them back now is not lack of distribution sites but dose shortages.

States and counties have set up dozens of mass vaccination centers – publicly-operated facilities that can give shots to 1,000 or more people per day – mostly near major cities such as Boston, Los Angeles and New York, according to state officials and a review of public information.

One county official said he recently helped open two mass vaccination centers near Seattle that could boost daily inoculations from about 1,000 per day to as much as 6,000, if only they had more vaccine.

“All of our sites are hampered by a lack of vaccines,” said Mark Del Beccaro, assistant deputy chief of coronavirus testing and immunization programs for King County, where Seattle is located.

Some local officials said they need federal funding to maintain vaccination capabilities. King County currently only has funding to keep sites going through March, Del Beccaro said.

Hospitals and pharmacies are facing similar constraints, according to officials from half a dozen states.

“I wish we could do more,” said Steve Hoffart, owner of Magnolia Pharmacy outside Houston, adding that he has not received vaccine shipments since January.

Hoffart said he fields some 15 emails a day from people seeking shots. “I try to keep patients hopeful.”

We're not likely to get a handle on this thing before mid-Summer, so everybody has to cooperate and quit bitchin' about it.