President-elect Biden will release ALL available COVID-19 vaccine doses

President-elect Joe Biden will distribute to the US all doses of coronavirus vaccines that Pfizer and Moderna make available as soon as they become available. This will reverse the Trump administration’s strategy of withholding half of the offer as a booster dose for those who get their first shots, a transition team spokesman told CNN.

President-elect Jo Biden’s transition team said it would release all available doses of coronavirus vaccines

“The president-elect believes we need to accelerate the spread of the vaccine while ensuring that the Americans who need it most get it as soon as possible,” said transition spokesman TJ Ducklo.

“He supports the immediate release of available doses and believes the government should stop vaccine supplies so we can get more shots in the arms of Americans now.”

“He will provide more details next week on how his administration will begin releasing available doses when he takes office on January 20th.”

The release of all available doses would double the supply of vaccines to the U.S. in hopes of speeding up the excruciatingly slow rollout.

The US vaccinated only 6.25 million people against coronavirus, despite handing out nearly 21.5 million doses of the shots, and less than two percent of Americans received their first shots, Bloomberg data shows.

But some of the states fastest to get through their assigned doses received smaller first-time shipments, raising questions about whether the extra doses could simply clog an already sluggish distribution and management chain.

In the United States, where 4,085 people died of COVID-19 on Thursday, patience has waned, bringing the death toll to over 365,000. There have been almost 275,000 new infections in the past 24 hours.

President-elect Biden will release all available doses of coronavirus vaccines to expedite the U.S. rollout, which saw only 6.25 million Americans vaccinated – less than 2% of the population – and end Trump’s plan to withhold the doses

More than 21 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines have been distributed to states, but some like North Dakota have received fewer than promised

The vaccination is off to a “rocky start,” said the director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Dr. Francis Collins, added that he wasn’t surprised by the stumbling blocks the US has seen so far.

Nationally, the rollout is in chaos, and every state, every county, every city and even every hospital draws up its own plan.

As a result, the success of each of these programs varies greatly from state to state. While some states have millions of doses of the precious COVID-19 vaccine on their shelves, others are getting gunshots and guns quickly. In some cities and counties, the cans run out before the federal government can refill them.

North Dakota is a leader in the conversion of dispensed cans into firearms. It has used 62 percent of its 43,950 cans – more than any other state.

West Virginia – a state known for some of the country’s worst health problems and the seat of “deaths of desperation” – has vaccinated more than four percent of its residents, the highest percentage of any state, according to Reuters.

BEST AND WORST: North Dakota and West Virginia have consistently used more than half of their allotted doses, while Mississippi and Georgia struggled to spend a third of their supplies

States in the south fought. Mississippi has released just 18 percent of the nearly 160,000 doses of COVID-19 vaccine that have been sent there. Georgia hasn’t done much better using less than 20 percent of its doses.

These states, as well as Alabama and South Carolina, have vaccinated only one percent of their population, which is below the miserable national vaccination rate. Only 1.8 percent of Americans have received their first doses of vaccine.

Dr. Anthony Fauci said the start near the holidays is partly to blame for the delays in US vaccine rollouts and that Americans should “ease off a bit” as anger over the slow rollout mounts. But he added, “If we don’t know what the original goal was, we really need to make some changes to what we’re doing.”

WHERE THE VACCINE ROLLOUT IS GOING WELL: COUNTRIES THAT DOSE LESS THAN EXPECTED AND HAVE FLEXIBLE PLANS ARE DELAYING

North Dakota was promised more than 9,750 doses of Pfizer’s vaccine per week, but initially only about half of that. The status of Moderna cans was also changed at short notice, but with a shorter interval.

The state is slated to receive about 10,000 doses of coronavirus vaccine weekly this month.

Disappointing initial grants turned out to be the silver lining: while states like New York leave hundreds of thousands of cans on Governor Andrew Cuomo’s spontaneous rage, North Dakota flies through them.

“I think the biggest challenge is not having enough doses to vaccinate everyone who wants to be vaccinated,” State Immunization Director Molly Howell told Dickinson Press.

“I think things have gone well so far. I didn’t sit here and think, “Oh, I wish we had” or “We could have done this”.

She added that the state may experience delays in receiving higher amounts of vaccine doses, and still believes the time span between when the dose arrives in North Dakota and the actual vaccinations could be shorter could be shorter.

However, it runs smoothly in long-term healthcare facilities. A chain manager said he saw no delays between the vaccine doses being dispensed and their administration.

“A lot of people think of us as a state because after the first week, I believe, we had about 90% of the doses given to our state in arms – which was really unknown elsewhere,” says Gretchen Garofoli, a pharmacist and clinical associate professor at West Virginia University, said NPR.

HOW CONNECTICUT INACCULATES TWICE THE RATE OF NEW YORK WITH A FLEXIBLE ROLLOUT AND A “LAST-MINUTE” DOSE DIVISION

Connecticut has led the race to vaccinate residents against COVID-19 since it received its first doses – thanks in part to a willingness to play a little quick and easy.

The constitutional state was one of the first in the US to shoot more than two percent of its population in the arms. At least 93,000 had been vaccinated by Thursday.

In addition, Gov Ned Lamont (D) said Monday that by the end of the week all nursing home residents and staff who want an initial dose of the shock will have received it.

By comparison, Connecticut’s neighbor, New York, had a sluggish rollout.

The Empire State, with five times the population of Connecticut, delivered just 313,000 shocks to health care workers and nursing home workers and residents.

New York has used only a third of the federal government’s allotted vaccine doses and vaccinated only 1.6 percent of its population.

In New York City – where more people died than any other city in the country – only about 145,000 people received at least one dose – 1.7 percent of the city’s population.

So why the discrepancy?

Public health experts say that New York’s definition of who classifies a health care worker, qualifies fewer people for vaccination, is stricter, and has no plan – like Connecticut’s – to send unused doses from one place to another .

The result is a painfully slow rollout and hundreds of thousands of vaccine doses on shelves in New York.

Connecticut has given at least 93,000 starting doses of its coronavirus vaccine (blue bar, right) – vaccinated more than 2% of its population, compared to 313,000 doses for New York (red bar, right), which vaccinated just 1.6% of its population

Connecticut has also used more doses of its coronavirus jabs distributed at 62%, compared with just 33.5% for New York

In the past week, Connecity has consumed between 50% and 65% of its vaccine supply with New York consuming between 40% and 28%

Public health experts say Connecticut is more negligent in its definition of who classifies a health care worker and qualifies more people for immunization. Pictured: Sister Susan McCarthy hands the Pfizer coronavirus vaccine to Lino Fernandes, an environmental assistant, at Backus Hospital in Norwich, Connecticut on December 15.

There is no single national vaccine rollout plan; each state had to develop its own plan.

Despite the shared border, New York and Connecticut’s plans differ drastically, especially in who will be included in the first phase of each state.

The first phase in New York is very rigid and includes only frontline healthcare workers, residents and nursing home workers.

Meanwhile, the first of three stages in Connecticut is much looser and more loosely defining who is classified as a healthcare worker.

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Dr. Howard Forman, director of the Yale School of Public Health’s health management program, told Medium that Connecticut is allowing healthcare facilities to determine who qualifies as the first-phase candidate.

“When you look at New York, it’s far more prescriptive who’s a health care worker and who’s on the front lines and who’s a health care worker,” he said.

“I think our hospitals and health systems are in their best interest to vaccinate health care workers and frontline workers first, but you also want to make sure you get them out as soon as possible when you have doses close by.”

He added that New York’s austerity could create a mystery for hospitals.

In addition, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo (D) has stated that hospitals or health care systems that vaccinate someone out of the state-set order can expect a fine of $ 1 million.

At the same time, any hospital that does not use all of its COVID-19 vaccine supply within seven days of receiving it will be fined $ 100.00.

‘In my opinion [Lamont] Make fewer rules than in a state like New York about who can get the cans and who can’t get the cans, ”Forman told Medium.

“I don’t think he scared people [distributing vaccines] by saying, “If you go anywhere outside these limits, I’ll put you in jail.”

“I think right now we need compassionate responsibility so that we can go through this process as best we can.”

In the meantime, New York was very rigid and only gave vaccines to frontline workers and residents and nursing home workers. Pictured: A Hamilton Park Nursing and Rehabilitation employee receives the Pfizer BioNTech coronavirus vaccine from Walgreens pharmacist Craig Brandt in Brooklyn, New York, Jan. 4

This broader definition has resulted in Connecticut getting more people per 100,000 on their first dose than New York.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s vaccine tracker, 2,830 per 100,000 Connecticut residents have received a starting dose.

In New York, that rate drops to 1,819 per 100,000.

Additionally, a tracker from Bloomberg shows that Connecticut used 62.1 percent of the footage the federal government had previously distributed to the state.

For comparison: New York only consumed 31 percent.

The slow pace of the rollout in New York has resulted in New York Mayor Bill de Blasio clashing with Cuomo.

De Blasio has asked for more flexibility in vaccine delivery, with all key workers included in the first phase plan.