Public Health Care Experts Raise the Alarm Over Slow Vaccine Rollout: ‘I’m Incredibly Frustrated’
Medical and public health experts bashing the Department of Health and Human Services for Operation Warp Speed rollout of Covid-19 vaccines, for just how far they have fallen under expectations.
CNN’s New Day spoke with Dr. Peter Hotez, of the Center for Vaccine Development, which focused on the only 2.1 million Americans that have thus been inoculated against Covid so far. Anchor Alisyn Camerota noted how this falls well below previous promises from America’s leaders that the 20 million vaccines should’ve been rolled out by now.
“There was so much hope about that, but what’s gone wrong?” Camerota asked.
Hotez answered by sharing his regrets about how the pandemic was handled this year, but he pointed out that national vaccine planning is difficult thanks to the “fragmented systems” for vaccine distribution between states.
“With these dire numbers we need to quickly accelerate in vaccinating the American population,” he said. “I don’t know whether we have the right health system to really make this work efficiently. We’re relying too much on the private pharmacy chains. People are calling all of the pharmacy chains locally and finding out which ones have the vaccine, and the answer is ‘check the website.’ This is not gonna be adequate. It’s gonna create a lot of panic and it’s gonna create yet another issue on top of existing ones.”
Hotez was hardly alone in his alarm over the disappointing rollout. Dr. Ashish Jha, dean of Brown University’s School of Public Health, penned a Twitter thread on Monday night to voice his “incredibly frustrated” reaction to how the vaccine rollout has been a repeated, underwhelming failure. He also warned that without more of a plan from the Departments of Health, states and health officials will be forced to handle vaccine distribution themselves with minimal funding, infrastructure, or strategy.
“The worst part is no real planning on what happens when vaccines arrive in states,” said Jha. “No plan, no money, just hope that states will figure this out.”
First, we were told in October that we’d have 100 million doses by end of December
100 million
Who said that? @SecAzar
In The Hill. Like 10 weeks ago
Then, by november, Azar was saying 40 million doses ready to ship out by end of Decemberhttps://t.co/rUYCrYwKgG
— Ashish K. Jha, MD, MPH (@ashishkjha) December 29, 2020
Now, we’ll miss 20M deadline but might be able to get to 20M by sometime in early January
But this is really not the worst part
The worst part is no real planning on what happens when vaccines arrive in states
No plan, no money, just hope that states will figure this out
4/n
— Ashish K. Jha, MD, MPH (@ashishkjha) December 29, 2020
So DOHs adding vaccines to their plate
Most are super stretched and they are trying to make a plan
They are trying to stand up a vaccination infrastructure
Congress had given them no money. States are out of money
So many are passing it on to hospitals, nursing homes
6/n
— Ashish K. Jha, MD, MPH (@ashishkjha) December 29, 2020
CNN’s Jim Sciutto also spoke to Dr. Anthony Fauci about this on Tuesday, and he asked how the country can catch up to its previous vaccine rollout expectations. Fauci agreed that “we’re not at the numbers that we wanted to be,” but he hoped that the momentum would pick up in January and allow the country to get closer to previous projections.
Sciutto also invoked Hotez’s argument by asking Fauci if the current rollout plan is exposing a problem with placing the burden entirely on pharmaceutical companies.
“Should Americans have confidence that the current plan will work?” He asked.
“We have to see,” Fauci responded. “Not being responsible for the rollout, I can’t personally guarantee that we will catch up. I hope we do.”
Watch above, via CNN.
