The Biden administration is resisting calls to change its vaccine distribution strategy as COVID-19 cases are on the rise in some states and demand is lagging elsewhere.
Several prominent health experts as well as Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer
Gretchen Whitmer Overnight Health Care: White House Refuses Call to Send More Vaccine Doses to Certain States | White House Warns States to Expect Low Weekly J&J Vaccine Shipments White House Refuses Call to Send More Vaccine Doses to Certain States Bipartisan lawmakers urge Biden to send more vaccines to Michigan amid peak MORE (D) and members of the state congressional delegation have called on the Biden administration to send additional doses of vaccine to their state amid a troubling spike in cases and hospitalizations there.
But on Friday, the White House rejected Michigan’s request, saying it would not bring vaccine doses from other parts of the country. The White House’s current distribution strategy is based on population, not hot spots.
The situation reflects the differences between the states; While Michigan is clamoring for more vaccine doses in the midst of a wave, other states have thousands of unfilled appointments.
Mississippi, for example, had more than 70,000 appointments available on Thursday, The New York Times reported.
Whitmer said she would continue to push for an increase in vaccine doses for her state after bringing the matter unsuccessfully in a phone call with President Biden
Joe BidenBiden Taps California Workplace Safety Leader to Lead OSHA Romney Blasts End of Filibuster, SCOTUS US Expansion Considers Cash Payments to Help Curb Migration MORE on Thursday evening.
“I argued for a surge,” Whitmer said at a news conference Friday. “At the moment that is not being used, but I will not give up.”
She said the strategy should be to use vaccine doses to “ suppress where the hot spots are. ”
While Michigan is by far the hardest hit state right now, Whitmer said other states should soon be calling for more doses as well. Other hot spot states are largely in the Northeast, including New Jersey, New York, and Rhode Island.
Today is Michigan and the Midwest. It could be a different part of our country by tomorrow, ”Whitmer said.
The assistance provided to Michigan includes additional staff, testing capacity, and treatments. The White House said it would offer additional staff to other hard-hit states in addition to Michigan, but did not specify which, saying talks are ongoing.
Eric Topol, professor of molecular medicine at Scripps Research, said sending additional staff to help with vaccinations amid the rise in cases in Michigan is a sign that the Biden administration is “ finally taking it seriously, ” adding that ‘this has been breeding for a few weeks’. .
Data from Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows there is a significant gap between the number of doses delivered to Michigan and the number of doses delivered, meaning there is room for the state to ramp up vaccinations even without more doses , Topol said.
But more broadly, he said more doses for hot spots would also make sense, rather than the current formula, which is largely based on population.
“Population based makes no sense,” he said. “It’s where it is needed.”
Jeff Zients
Jeff Zients Overnight Health Care: White House Refuses Call to Send More Vaccine Doses to Certain States | White House Warns States to Expect Low Weekly J&J Vaccine Shipments White House Warns States to Expect Low Weekly J&J Vaccine Shipments White House Refuses Call to Send More Vaccine Doses to Certain States MORE, the White House coordinator for the COVID-19 response, defended the population-based formula on Friday, saying that vaccines are needed all over the country and the government did not want to shift more doses to hotspots like Michigan.
“There are tens of millions of people across the country in every state and province who have not yet been vaccinated,” Zients said. “And the fair and equitable way to distribute the vaccine is based on the adult population by state, tribe and territory. That’s how it’s done, and we will continue to do so. ”
“The virus is unpredictable,” he added. “We don’t know where the next increase in the number of cases could occur.”
As a majority of states have now made all adults eligible for vaccines, the problem is starting to shift in some parts of the country to supply outpacing demand rather than the other way around.
“Now that demand starts to decline, we are going to try to get people to work in factories. That’s why we go into churches and all these other things, ”Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine
Mike DeWine Johnson & Johnson’s Vaccine Doses Will Plummet Next Week TV Presenter And Zookeeper Jack Hanna Diagnosed With Dementia Here’s Who In Every State Is Eligible For COVID-19 Vaccines MORE (R) said at a press conference on Thursday.
Polls show that Republicans are more reluctant to get the vaccine than the population at large. A Kaiser Family Foundation poll published in late March found that 29 percent of Republicans said they “definitely wouldn’t” get the vaccine, compared with 13 percent of people overall.
Minority leader in the Senate Mitch McConnell
Addison (Mitch) Mitchell McConnellRomney Blasts End Filibuster, Expansion of SCOTUS McConnell, GOP Rejects Biden Executive Order on SCOTUS Overnight Defense: Biden Proposes 3B Defense Budget | Criticism comes from left and right | Pentagon moves to new screening for extremists MORE (R-Ky.) Urged members of his party to get vaccinated.
“As a Republican man, I took the vaccine as soon as it was my turn,” he said at an event in Kentucky at the end of March. “I would encourage all Republican men to do that.”
As vaccinations progress, new cases remain relatively stable on a national basis, albeit at a high level of about 65,000 per day. In Michigan, however, the number of cases is on the rise, as is the number of hospital admissions, which have risen from about 850 in early March to more than 3,000, according to data collected by The New York Times.
The ongoing toll of the virus, even with available vaccines, underscores the need to get them under arms as soon as possible.
“The biggest tragedy right now is that we have vaccines on hand that can prevent hospitalizations and deaths, and if we see an increase in these, it makes sense that we need to act quickly to try to prevent that,” said Jennifer Nuzzo. a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. “And so if there are states that are struggling more than others, I think it makes sense that they get additional vaccines.”