Elderly people aged 65 and older wait in line at the Sarasota Department of Health COVID-19 Vaccine Clinic in Sarasota, Florida, USA January 4, 2021.
Octavio Jones | Reuters
The federal government is changing the way it allocates vaccine doses for the coronavirus, now relying on how quickly states can administer shots and the size of their older population, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said Tuesday.
States are given two weeks to prepare for the change, Azar told reporters at a news conference. That should give states enough time to improve their data reporting to the government and ensure that all vaccinations are “immediately” documented, he said.
States currently fail to report vaccinations in a timely manner, Azar said, adding that vaccine doses are “in freezers in hospitals.”
The announcement comes as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are issuing new guidelines that extend suitability for the coronavirus vaccine to anyone aged 65 and older, as well as those with comorbid conditions, such as diabetes and heart disease. The states’ focus on vaccinating health workers and nursing homes has created a bottleneck and slowed the pace of vaccinations, a senior official told CNBC.
“States should not wait to complete phase 1a prioritization before moving to broader categories of eligibility,” Azar said Tuesday, explaining the new guidelines. Think of it like boarding a plane. You may have a sequential order in which you board people. But you don’t wait until literally every person in a group is on board before moving on to the next. ‘
The government will also stop withholding millions of doses reserved for the second round of injections of Pfizer and Moderna’s two-dose vaccines, the official said, adding that they released doses held in reserve on Sunday. President-elect Joe Biden’s transition team announced a similar plan on Friday.
Vaccine doses were previously assigned based on the number of adults in each state. But US officials complain that the rate of vaccinations is too slow, as the supply of vaccine doses is greater than the demand.
Monday morning, there were more than 25.4 million doses across the US, but just over 8.9 million injections were delivered, according to data from the CDC. The number is a long way from the federal government’s goal of vaccinating 20 million Americans by the end of 2020 and 50 million Americans by the end of this month.
This is a story in progress. Please check again for updates.