NEW YORK (Reuters) -Seattle public health officials have so little COVID-19 funding on hand that they worry they will have to shut down some virus testing sites as they campaign to dose their 2.3 million residents with Pfizer’s vaccines Inc and Moderna Inc.
King County, which represents greater Seattle, has $ 14 million in 2021 COVID-19 funding, roughly enough to fund its operations for a single month, and a fraction of the $ 87 million COVID-19 emergency response it is in. 2020, said Ingrid Ulrey, the director of public health policy for King County.
“We’ve been using pins and needles for the last three or four months, watching what happens at the federal level, waiting, watching,” she said. When newly approved federal funds finally trickle down to her level, she expects them to be less than this year, insufficient and overdue.
“It’s shockingly low,” she added. “We have a huge new, unprecedented, daunting task to deliver vaccines.” King County is at risk of not being able to hire the up to 40 additional staff needed to start the next wave of public vaccinations.
In counties in the United States, the funding crisis has limited the hiring of the necessary vaccine staff, delayed the establishment of vaccination centers and undermined efforts to raise public awareness, officials told Reuters.
The federal government has spent more than $ 10 billion to accelerate the development of the COVID-19 vaccine, but has so far disbursed little money for its distribution, even as it shifted responsibility for actual vaccinations to state and local governments.
A new $ 2.3 trillion pandemic relief and spending package will provide $ 8.75 billion to states to assist with vaccinations, in line with what state and local officials had requested but should have started months after the distribution work.
“The federal government has distributed the vaccines to the states. Now it is up to the states to manage. Get moving! US President Donald Trump tweeted Wednesday.
The promised wave of newly approved vaccinations has been just one wave: About 2.8 million Americans have received an injection, including less than 170,000 nursing home residents, one of the most at-risk groups, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). That’s far less than the 20 million vaccinations the federal government promised for December.
Nearly 10 million of the 12.4 million doses the government has distributed to states remain unused, and on Tuesday, President-elect Joe Biden said it would take years, not months, to vaccinate most Americans at the current rate.
Hospitals and pharmacies CVS and Walgreens are responsible for the first wave of vaccinations for health workers and long-term caregivers. But local health systems will play a leading role in immunizing the next bigger waves, and will be critical to groups such as the uninsured, the underinsured, the homeless and others.
The shortage of local public health personnel will only become more challenging as vaccination efforts expand to critical workers and older Americans, said Claire Hannan, the director of the Association of Immunization Managers, a trade group for local public health departments.
Brandon Meline, logistics chief of the Champaign-Urbana Public Health District in Illinois, said their district is tapping into a rainy days fund until more federal aid arrives.
“We’ve been in major planning for four weeks and two weeks in active distribution, and we don’t have a secure flow of funding,” Meline said in a Christmas Eve interview while awaiting delivery of a vaccine.
Coconino County, the largest in Arizona by area, needs about 20 people to run vaccination clinics and to reach residents who live hours away from hospitals, including some located at the bottom of the Grand Canyon, said Kim Musselman, director of the county health department. and human services.
Musselman said his nurses are thin because they man the free vaccination clinic it set up in Coconino County and will struggle to maintain it, let alone set up additional clinics, without more funding. The state has not indicated that help is coming.
“We have been told, as we have asked repeatedly, is there a government support reimbursement for vaccination-related expenses? And we were still being told no at this point, ”she said.
Reporting by Rebecca Spalding and Carl O’Donnell; edited by Peter Henderson, Nick Zieminski and Jonathan Oatis