Colorado, along with other states, is getting fewer doses of the Pfizer coronavirus vaccine than expected, which was blamed by Governor Jared Polis for the federal government’s inability to ship available supplies.
The state had expected to receive 67,860 doses next week, but now expects only 39,780 doses, Polis said at a news conference Friday.
That’s despite each vial of the vaccine apparently containing six instead of the expected five doses, Polis said.
“I’m really calling on the federal government to get the vaccines. Pfizer said they’re in a warehouse awaiting shipping instructions,” Polis said. “The federal government must get them instructions today.”
Due to the shortage, some health workers will have to delay their first vaccination, Polis said.
Twenty-five thousand of the doses received next week will be given to residents and employees of long-term care facilities, while 14,000 doses will go to hospitals for primary care health workers, Polis said, adding that the state still expects to receive 95,600 doses of the Moderna next week. vaccine.
So far, 12,123 Coloradans have been vaccinated, according to a new vaccine dashboard launched by the state on Friday.
Colorado is experiencing a steady downward trend in new COVID cases “ not commonly seen in the country right now, ” said state epidemiologist Dr. Rachel Herlihy, adding that the state has’ turned the curve ‘after Thanksgiving and is’ starting to see marked improvements. “in hospital admissions.
On Friday, the state saw 3,693 new COVID cases, 1,403 hospitalized with the virus and a total of 3,321 deaths, Polis said.
The state’s positivity rate falls to about 7% from a high of nearly 13% in mid-November, he said. The World Health Organization this spring recommended a rate of no more than 5% for communities to reopen businesses and other activities.
According to Polis, one in 59 Coloradans is contagious, compared to one in 40 earlier this month.
In El Paso County, hospital admissions this week were nearly half of what they were the week before, the county health department said Friday. According to a press release, there were 82 hospital admissions in the province from December 11 to 17, instead of 160 from December 4 to 10. According to data available on the website, the province has seen a nearly 30% decrease in the 14-day incidence. The number of deaths has also fallen, from a seven-day average of seven on December 8 to three and a half on Thursday.
State officials have wondered why shipments of the Pfizer vaccine, the first to be approved for delivery by the Food and Drug Administration and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, are among the first estimates when the company says it has supplies in its warehouse.
“This is disruptive and frustrating,” Washington State Head of Government Jay Inslee, a Democrat, wrote on Twitter Thursday after learning from the CDC that the state’s allocation would be cut by 40%. “We need accurate, predictable numbers to plan and ensure-the-ground success.”
California, where an explosion in cases puts intensive care units to breaking point, will receive 160,000 less vaccine doses next week than government officials expected.
Missouri, Michigan, Iowa, Connecticut, Georgia, Illinois, Kansas, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire and Indiana have also been told to expect smaller shipments.
In Washington, DC, two senior Trump administration officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said states will receive their full allocations, but misunderstandings about vaccine deliveries and changes to the delivery schedule could create confusion.
An official said the initial number of available doses provided to states were projections based on information from manufacturers, not fixed allocations.
The two officials also said that changes the federal government has made to the delivery schedule, at the request of governors, may add to the false impression that fewer doses are coming. The most significant change involves spreading the delivery of states’ weekly allocations over several days to make distribution more manageable.
“They’re going to get their weekly assignment, it just won’t get them in one day,” said an official.
Pfizer made it clear that nothing has changed in terms of production.
“Pfizer has had no manufacturing problems with our COVID-19 vaccine, and no shipments of the vaccine have been suspended or delayed,” spokesman Eamonn Nolan said in an email. “We will continue to ship our orders to the locations specified by the US government.”
The company said in a written statement that it “has successfully shipped all 2.9 million doses that the US government has asked us to ship to the locations they specify. We still have millions of doses in our warehouse, but so far we have not received shipping instructions for additional doses. “
The senior government officials said Pfizer’s statement about doses awaiting shipping instructions, while technically accurate, easily omits the explanation: It was planned that way.
Federal officials said Pfizer had committed to providing 6.4 million doses of its vaccine in the first week after approval. But federal Operation Warp Speed had already planned to distribute just 2.9 million of those doses right away. An additional 2.9 million would be held in Pfizer’s warehouse to ensure that individuals vaccinated the first week could later receive their second injection to make the protection fully effective. Finally, the government is holding a further 500,000 doses as a reserve against unforeseen problems.
Pfizer said it remains confident that it can deliver up to 50 million doses worldwide this year and up to 1.3 billion doses by 2021.
The US added a second COVID-19 vaccine to its arsenal on Friday as the outbreak goes through its deadliest phase on record, with the country regularly recording more than 3,000 deaths a day.
The vaccine developed by Moderna received FDA approval Friday, paving the way for its use to begin as early as Monday in the largest round of vaccinations in US history.
The goal is to vaccinate about 80% of the US population by mid-2021 to finally overcome the outbreak.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.