On Thursday, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, made a prediction that was music to the ears of millions of Americans who are not yet eligible for COVID-19 vaccination.
“If you look at the projection, I would imagine that by the time we get to April, that will be what I would call because [lack] of better wording, ‘open season’, ”Fauci told NBC’s ‘Today’ show. “Namely, almost anyone and everyone in any category could get vaccinated.”
April? That’s less than 50 days away. The US vaccination campaign began 60 days ago, December 14. Since then, only 11.3 million Americans – mostly health workers, with a few seniors sprinkled in them – have received both doses of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine. Another 24 million Americans have been given their first chance and are waiting for their second.
The news is filled with headlines about crashing appointment websites, struggling seniors and drivers complaining about a shortage of supply. In the meantime, we have only just started vaccinating Americans 65 or older; most essential workers are not even eligible yet.
So is Fauci false hope when he says that “anyone and everyone in any category” can sign up for vaccination from April? Or is its projection realistic?
The answer is surprising – and encouraging, if you actually look at the numbers. It turns out that April is not out of the question at all.
The first thing to consider is the current rate of vaccination, which is faster than you may think. “If you compare it now to what we literally did a month ago,” Fauci said Thursday, “the escalation has been really significant.”
He is right. On January 11, the US administered an average of 632,000 doses per day. Now we are on average 1.6 million. That’s not just a two-and-a-half-fold increase. It is also already exceeding the revised goal of 1.5 million doses per day set by President Biden two weeks ago after critics said his previous goal of 1 million doses per day was too low.
The next thing to consider is where the offering is going. (Hint: it’s going up.) “As we move into March and April, the number of doses available will allow for a much bigger approach to mass vaccination, which is really going much faster than what you’re seeing now,” Fauci said Thursday.
Initially, logistical bottlenecks caused a delay in the vaccination; many states administered less than half the doses they received. But now that some of those tangles have been untangled, the national share of available doses administered has soared to 68 percent, with several states clearing out 80 or even 90 percent.
Supply, on the other hand, is what holds us back today; currently, the doses delivered consistently outstrip those distributed for the first time since the start of the rollout. But as Fauci said, this should change soon. Since Biden took office, the number of doses sent to states has increased by 28 percent to 11 million doses per week, said Jeffrey Zients, White House coordinator COVID-19. Starting Thursday, the administration will increase that number by another 5 percent, with 1 million doses going directly to 6,500 pharmacies and another 1 million directly to 250 community health centers serving hard-to-reach groups, such as the homeless, migrant workers and public housing residents.
Production is also picking up. Initially, Pfizer and Moderna pledged to deliver 100 million doses each by the end of March. But Pfizer recently added 20 million doses to that pledge – then announced that it could ship all 200 million doses purchased by the US by the end of May, or two months earlier than expected, as vaccinators have six or even seven doses. could squeeze out of bottles that would only contain five.
At the same time, “Moderna is asking US regulators to approve what it says could be a remarkably simple proposal to speed up the immunization of Americans against the coronavirus: fill the empty space in the vials with as much as 50 percent more doses” , according to the New York Times. If the change is approved, which could happen this month, Moderna could theoretically ship tens of millions of additional doses by the end of March and another 150 million by June.
To put that in perspective, about 68 million doses have been distributed in the last 60 days. In the next 50 days – that is, by April – the US could get 175 million more.
And that’s not even the single-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine, expected to be approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration this month, with 100 million doses to follow by July. Or the vaccines Novavax and Astra Zeneca, which may also be available in April. Or the fact that the Biden government announced it had secured on Thursday another 200 million doses of Pfizer and Moderna due to be delivered in “regular increments” by the end of July – bringing the total from those two manufacturers alone to 600 million doses, or enough to completely vaccinate every adult in America (and then some).
Administering so many extra millions of doses will be challenging, but Fauci sounded confident on Thursday. “I imagine, and actually I’m pretty sure that when we get there at the end of April, you’ll see … pharmacies, local vaccine centers, mobile units that are really accelerating the rate of vaccination,” he said. “Hopefully we will have a much greater acceleration of dosing in early spring.”
It’s worth noting that the US has already shown that it can deliver three million flu shots per day – double the current daily average for COVID-19 injections.
But even if the pace of actual vaccination doesn’t speed up that much, we should still be on track for “open season” in April. The numbers are correct. There are about 54 million seniors in the US, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention classifies about 30 million Americans as essential workers. All told, the combined number of people likely to be eligible for vaccination before “open season” – a group that may include non-seniors with “high-risk medical conditions” – is approximately 182 million, according to the CDC.
But here’s the thing: Not all eligible Americans will actually get vaccinated – especially with more and more younger workers becoming eligible. Based on the latest Kaiser Family Foundation poll, a majority of Americans say they don’t want to get vaccinated as soon as possible, and 31 percent of non-medical essential workers say they plan to wait and see how the vaccine works. on other people before rolling up their sleeves. Among Americans aged 18-29 – and among black Americans, who have long suffered from medical discrimination – that number rises to 43 percent. This is 37 percent for Latinos.
According to a respected forecast, the current U.S. trajectory suggests that at least 100 million Americans will have started vaccination by April 1 – more than enough to cover all seniors, front-line workers, and high-risk individuals who say they plan to submit. vaccinate. as soon as they can. And that assumes that the vaccination rate is never more than 2 million doses per day.
The bottom line, as former FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb explained recently, is that soon, “maybe in April, supply will outpace demand” – and then “the challenge won’t be how to ration a scarce commodity, but how patients reluctant to get vaccinated. “
At that point, it would come as no surprise if state and federal leaders decide it is time to keep the ball rolling by opening up vaccination “to virtually everyone and everyone in every category.” This is especially true if, as Gottlieb predicts, the monthly vaccination will reach 100 million doses by the end of March.
Not that vaccination itself would be immediate for anyone and everyone who wants it, as Fauci noted on Thursday. “From then on,” he said, “logistically it would probably take several months to get vaccines into people’s arms.” Hesitation, meanwhile, would continue to be a challenge, especially as cases continue to decline, seniors are protected from serious illness, and more reluctant Americans wonder, “Why bother?”
Still, Fauci remains optimistic. “Hopefully, when we get to the middle and end of summer,” he said Thursday, “we [will] have achieved the goal we are talking about – namely, that the vast majority of people in this country are vaccinated. “
Read more from Yahoo News: