Just a few days after the authorization of the coronavirus vaccine in the USA on Friday night, the rollout of the first batch of the vaccine is already messy. Due to the aggression of the second wave of the coronavirus sweeping across Europe and other continents, the US Food and Drugs Administration granted an Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) to two of the top vaccine manufacturers in the world (Pfizer – USA and BioNTech – Germany) for immediate release and vaccination of the US populace.
Vaccination started on Monday (14 December 2020) as scheduled and citizens of the US expect to get vaccinated in a few weeks when in reality they are going to have to wait for months.
“The public has to be cognizant that there is going to be unfairness and error or sometimes just stupidity,” said Juliette Kayyem, a security specialist at Havard’s Kennedy School of Government and former assistant secretary for intergovernmental affairs at the Department of Homeland Security during the Obama administration.
Pfizer is expected to produce and supply up to 6.4 million doses by December 19according to Operation Warp Speed, which is the government’s vaccine effort. This amount of doses of vaccine is supposed to increase to 40 million by the end of the month when another vaccine company in the US, Moderna joins in the supply together with Pfizer.
Vaccine advisors according to plan have broken down priority groups into smaller groups to designate the very first people to get the released vaccines. Those in the a1 group to first receive are the frontline workers and people in long-term care homes. This small group, which consists of about 24 million people, outnumbers the vaccine supply already. The 40 million doses to be produced by the end of December can only serve or cover 20 million people.
Operation Warp Speed chief adviser Moncef Slaoui has projected Pfizer and Moderna together can make and deliver 60 to 70 million vaccines in January and hopes two other vaccine makers, AstraZeneca and Johnson and Johnson, will join the mix of authorized vaccines in the coming months.
“We can immunize 20 million in December, 30 million in January, 50 million in February,” Slaoui said at the White House. However, he does not project having vaccinated the full population until June, and this is barring the fact that nothing goes wrong with manufacturing.
The fact that citizens won’t get to be vaccinated early enough is the first messy thing already. There would be hitches here and there in manufacturing, transport, and storage of the vaccines not to mention human errors, unforeseen circumstances, and accidents.
“There will be course corrections and someone, sometimes, is just going to do something stupid”, Kayyem said.
Definitely, it is going to get messy and US citizens should get ready to deal with that.
References:
CNN health
BBC news
