TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) – Terry Beth Hadler was so eager to get a life-saving COVID-19 vaccination that the 69-year-old piano teacher queued at night in a parking lot with hundreds of other seniors.
She wouldn’t do it again.
Hadler said she waited 14 hours and a brawl broke out almost before dawn on Tuesday as people lined up outside the library in Bonita Springs, Florida, where officials offered shots on a first-come, first-served basis. older.
“I’m afraid the event was a super spreader,” she said. “I was petrified.”
The race to vaccinate millions of Americans is starting slower and messier than public health officials and Operation Warp Speed leaders expected from the Trump administration.
Overworked, underfunded public health departments of the state struggle to put together plans to administer vaccines. Counties and hospitals have taken different approaches, leading to long lines, confusion, frustration, and jammed phone lines. A host of logistical problems have complicated the process of overcoming the plague that killed more than 340,000 Americans.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis asks for patience and notes that vaccine supplies are limited.
“It might not be for everyone today, maybe not next week. But in the coming weeks, as long as we keep getting the supply, you will have the opportunity to get this, ”he said Wednesday.
Dr. Ashish Jha, a health policy researcher and dean of the Brown University School of Public Health, said the main problem is that states are not getting adequate financial or technical support from the federal government. Jha said the Trump administration, primarily the Department of Health and Human Services, has set up states to fail.
“There are still many states to do,” he said, “but you need a much more active role for the federal government than what they were willing to do. They have largely told states, ‘This is your responsibility. . ‘”
Delays in reporting vaccination figures partially explain why many states are failing to meet their year-end goals, but officials blame logistical and financial hurdles for the slow pace.
Many states don’t have the money to hire staff, pay overtime, or reach the public. The equipment needed to keep the vaccines cold makes their distribution more difficult. Also, health care providers must follow vaccinations so that they have enough to provide the required second doses 21 days after the first.
Dr. James McCarthy, chief physician executive at Memorial Hermann in Houston, said the hospital system has delivered about half of the roughly 30,000 doses it has received since December 15.
The system had to make a plan from scratch. Among other things, drivers had to ensure that everyone in the vaccination areas could distance themselves socially, and they had to build in a 15-minute observation period for each patient so that recipients could be monitored for any adverse events.
“We can’t just hand it out like candy,” McCarthy said.
Pasadena, California, vaccinates its firefighters in groups of 50 after their two-day shifts are over so they can recuperate during their four days off. “We don’t want most of our workforce – if they experience side effects – all gone at once,” said city spokeswoman Lisa Derderian.
In South Carolina, state lawmakers wonder why the state only administered 35,158 of the 112,125 Pfizer doses it received on Wednesday. State Senator Marlon Kimpson said officials told him that some primary care health workers are refusing to be vaccinated while others are on vacation.
Lin Humphrey, a college professor whose 81-year-old mother lives with him in a high-rise Miami apartment, said it took him about 80 phone calls to get someone on the line at a Miami Beach hospital that began vaccinating the elderly last week.
“It reminded me of the 1980s when you had to call a radio station to be the 10th caller to get concert tickets,” said Humphrey. “When I finally finished, I cried with the woman on the phone.”
For the past few weeks, Trump administration health officials had spoken of the goal of sending enough vaccine to inoculate 20 million Americans by the end of the month. But it is unclear whether the US will reach that point.
Army General Gustave Perna, Chief Operating Officer of Operation Warp Speed, said on Wednesday that 14 million doses have been shipped across the country so far. Tracking by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showed that nearly 2.8 million injections had been given as of Wednesday.
Officials said there is a delay in reporting vaccinations, but they are still slower than expected. Perna predicted the pace would pick up next week.
“We agree that number is lower than we hoped,” said Dr. Moncef Slaoui, Warp Speed’s chief scientist.
On Tuesday, President-elect Joe Biden said the Trump administration is “falling far behind” and promised to pick up the pace once he took office on Jan. 20. In early December, Biden pledged to distribute 100 million shots in the first 100 days. of his administration.
Jha said Biden’s goal is ambitious but achievable.
“It will not be easy if they pick up an infrastructure on January 20 that is not ready to run on day one,” he said.
In Tennessee, health officials had hoped to meet the goal of providing 200,000 doses by the end of the year, but shipping delays could prevent that. Health officials said the state received 20,300 doses on Tuesday expected to arrive last week.
“We just couldn’t have done anything about that,” said Dr. Lisa Piercey, the Tennessee health commissioner.
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Kunzelman reported from College Park, Maryland. Associated Press reporter John Raby in Charleston, West Virginia; Stefanie Dazio in Los Angeles; Adriana Gomez Licon in Miami; Sean Murphy in Oklahoma City; Lauran Neergaard in Alexandria, Virginia; Marion Renault in Rochester, Minnesota; Michael Schneider in Orlando, Florida; Desiree Mathurin in Atlanta; and Michelle Liu in Columbia, South Carolina contributed to this report.