I've been working the vaccine hotline for work. Our talking point has been that anyone that received a first shot has a second one reserved from the state.

This morning this new came across and I don't know what I'm supposed to tell customers anymore:

https://twitter.com/kylegriffin1/status/1350148243976384519

When the Trump admin announced that the federal government would begin releasing coronavirus vaccine doses held in reserve for second shots, no such reserve existed.

States were anticipating a windfall.

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/01/15/trump-vaccine-reserve-used-up/


When Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar announced this week that the federal government would begin releasing coronavirus vaccine doses held in reserve for second shots, no such reserve existed, according to state and federal officials briefed on distribution plans. The Trump administration had already begun shipping out what was available beginning at the end of December, taking second doses directly off the manufacturing line.

Now, health officials across the country who had anticipated their extremely limited vaccine supply as much as doubling beginning next week are confronting the reality that their allocations will remain largely flat, dashing hopes of dramatically expanding access for millions of elderly people and those with high-risk medical conditions. Health officials in some cities and states were informed in recent days about the reality of the situation, while others are still in the dark.

Because both of the vaccines authorized for emergency use in the United States are two-dose regimens, the Trump administration’s initial policy was to hold back second doses to protect against the possibility of manufacturing disruptions. But that approach shifted in recent weeks, according to the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter.

These officials were told that Operation Warp Speed, which is overseeing the distribution of vaccines, stopped stockpiling second doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine at the end of last year. The last shots held in reserve of Moderna’s supply, meanwhile, began shipping out over the weekend.

The shift, in both cases, had to do with increased confidence in the supply chain, so that Operation Warp Speed leaders felt they could reliably anticipate the availability of doses for booster shots — required three weeks later in the case of the Pfizer-BioNTech product and four weeks later under Moderna’s protocol.

But it also meant there was no stockpile of second doses waiting to be shipped, as Trump administration officials suggested this week. Azar, at a Tuesday briefing, said, “Because we now have a consistent pace of production, we can now ship all of the doses that had been held in physical reserve.” He explained the decision as part of the “next phase” of the nation’s vaccination campaign.

Those in line for their second shots are expected to get them on schedule since states are still getting regular vaccine shipments. But state and local officials say they are angry and bewildered by the shifting directions and changing explanations of supply.

The health director in Oregon, Patrick M. Allen, was so disturbed that he wrote Azar on Thursday demanding an explanation. “Earlier today, we became concerned when we discovered there were no additional doses available for allocation,” he said in the letter, which was reviewed by The Washington Post.

On a call with Perna earlier the same day, Allen wrote, the four-star Army general had “informed us there is no reserve of doses, and we are already receiving the full allocation of vaccines.”

“If true, this is extremely disturbing, and puts our plans to expand eligibility at grave risk,” Allen added. “Those plans were made on the basis of reliance on your statement about “releasing the entire supply” you have in reserve. If this information is accurate, we will be unable to begin vaccinating our vulnerable seniors on Jan. 23, as planned.”

HHS spokesman Michael Pratt confirmed in an email that the final reserve of second doses had been released to states for order over the weekend but did not address Azar’s comments this week, saying only, “Operation Warp Speed has been monitoring manufacturing closely, and always intended to transition from holding second doses in reserve as manufacturing stabilizes and we gained confidence in the ability for a consistent flow of vaccines.”

He also said states have ordered only about 75 percent of what is available to them.

Azar’s comments followed a Jan. 8 announcement by President-elect Joe Biden’s transition team that his administration would move to release all available doses, rather than holding half in reserve for booster shots. Biden’s advisers said the move would be a way to accelerate distribution of the vaccine, which is in short supply across the country.

When Azar embraced the change four days later — after initially saying it was shortsighted and potentially unethical to put people at risk of missing their booster shots — he did not say the original policy had already been phased out, or that the stockpile had been exhausted. Signaling to states that they would soon see expanded supply, he also urged them to begin vaccinating adults 65 and older and those under 64 with a high-risk medical condition. Officials in some states embraced that directive, while others said suddenly putting hundreds of thousands of additional people at the front of the line would overwhelm their capacity.

In subsequent conversations with state and local authorities, federal officials sought to temper those instructions, said people who participated in the conversations. Gustave F. Perna, chief operating officer of Operation Warp Speed, spoke directly to officials in at least two of the jurisdictions receiving vaccine supply, explaining that allocations would not increase and that they did not have to broaden eligibility as they had previously been told, according to a health official who was not authorized to discuss the matter.

The revised instructions led additional jurisdictions to hold off on broadening their priority groups. One state health official noted that the updated eligibility guidance announced Tuesday did not appear on the website of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, even though it was stated as federal policy by Azar and by Robert R. Redfield, the CDC director, in their remarks earlier this week. Under the original recommendations, adults 65 and older and front-line essential workers were to comprise the second priority group, known as phase 1b, in line after medical workers and residents and staff of long-term care facilities.

But the issue of supply was most troubling to state health officials.

“States were shocked and surprised that they did not see an increase in their allocations, and when they asked for explanations, some of them were told there was not a large stockpile of second doses to draw from,” said an official working with numerous states on vaccination planning who spoke on the condition of anonymity to recount sensitive conversations. “They thought they were getting more doses and they planned for more doses and opened up to 65 and up, thinking they were getting more.”

In an email that reached some state officials on Friday morning, Christopher Sharpsten, an Operation Warp Speed director, called it a “false rumor” that “the federal government was holding back vaccine doses in warehouses to guarantee a second/booster dose.”

But it had been Azar who said Tuesday that “we are releasing the entire supply we have for order by states, rather than holding second doses in physical reserve.”

There was additional confusion. Another change Azar announced this week — making allocation of doses dependent on how quickly states administer them — would not take effect for two weeks, he said.

But Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont (D) on Thursday tweeted that federal officials had notified the state that it would receive an additional 50,000 doses next week “as a reward for being among the fastest states” to get shots into arms. West Virginia, meanwhile, which is moving at the fastest clip based on CDC data, did not get any additional doses, said Holli Nelson, a spokeswoman for the state’s National Guard.

In a sign that the incentive structure may not be long-lived, a senior Biden transition official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to address ongoing deliberations, said this week the team did not look kindly on a system that “punishes states.”

Let's hope Biden's team can save this - but its going to take some time to get "in order."

I expect a BUNCH of governors to issue statements soon.

Everything I was learning was that things were low but coming
This says we've blown our load.

I might be reading it wrong, but it sounded like Biden was going to cash out the reserves. Still pretty goddam amazing that Azar and the current team would lie about having reserves. Which is goddam insane.

"Azar’s comments followed a Jan. 8 announcement by President-elect Joe Biden’s transition team that his administration would move to release all available doses, rather than holding half in reserve for booster shots. Biden’s advisers said the move would be a way to accelerate distribution of the vaccine, which is in short supply across the country."

The way we do medicine in this country is INSANE, man.

Seriously seriously doubt it.
The vaccine numbers we've been getting as a company have been LOW
The first week we received something like 28k doses, the last two weeks it's been either 3000 or 300, I can't remember.

They did it weeks ago without telling anyone - so the projections to ramp vaccinations up don't match what states were planning/depending on.

You have to make a plan, communicate it out, make sure people understand the impacts and then do it.

You don't do it, wait weeks, then reveal info when pressed and AFTER people have made a bunch of plans.


This is true incompetence - the lack of communication is pattern from trump and his administration to 'hide' bad news.

Things going bad is something you can re-work your plan around - hiding information and lying is what destroys plans.

Cashing out the reserve and pretending like it still exists is some of the dumbest shit i've heard.

that have fallen off the wagon during the Trump admin (especially in the last 100 days).

I hope the Biden team has a plan to take inventory of the hot fire they're inheriting and name every single one of those things early on in the admin so the blame does not fall on them.

would it make more sense to have a national plan rather than this bs going through the states? I mean, I know t***p wanted no parts of a plan to help the states, but because of the urgency of this, seems like it should be handled federally. at least for a long enough time to formulate a real plan for the states.

or are we too far gone already?

Irony at its finest. Would be funny if not so sad

and when 6 people couldn't keep their doctor, politifact called it the biggest lie of the year?

now in the middle of the worst surge of a pandemic, with 400,000 people dead, this shit's like the number 4 story.

Republicans are not honest in their intentions.

NEW: Joe Biden and his advisers are inheriting no #coronavirus vaccine distribution plan to speak of from the Trump administration, sources tell CNN.

"There is nothing for us to rework. We are going to have to build everything from scratch," one source said.

https://mobile.twitter.com/AnaCabrera/status/1352220411988242434

Criminal.