Vaccine rollout gets shot in the arm

Pfizer expects to deliver 25 million doses to the US this year, 2.9 million of which are set to arrive in hospitals on Monday.

Pfizer is packing boxes with thousands of its COVID-19 vaccines for shipment around the US as hospitals gear up to give shots while also confronting the surging pandemic.

Trucks carrying the fragile cargo at minus-94 degrees Fahrenheit will start rolling out of Pfizer plants in Michigan and Wisconsin on Sunday.

Doses are scheduled to start arriving at hospitals on Monday.

Health-care workers treating COVID-19 patients, nursing-home residents and perhaps others could start getting inoculated soon thereafter, though it might take a day or two for facilities to train staff and begin injections.

The rest of the population will have to wait, as the drugmakers produce and ship more of the doses.

After the fastest development of a vaccine ever recorded, distribution of the shots kicks off an equally formidable challenge: a months long inoculation campaign not seen since efforts to eradicate the polio virus.

Pfizer-BioNTech’s COVID-19 vaccine was granted an emergency use authorisation, paving the way for its imminent rollout across the country. Picture: Justin Tallis / AFP

“People should not forget how extraordinary it is that we are even talking about having a vaccine by mid-December at all.

“In January, I don’t think anybody thought this was feasible,” said Kelly Moore, associate director of immunisation education at the Immunisation Action Coalition.

Initial supplies will be limited.

Pfizer projects it will deliver 25 million doses to the US this year, including 2.9 million doses the first week.

Inoculation requires two doses three weeks apart, so only half that many people will be vaccinated.

States will decide where many doses go.

Gen. Gustave Perna, chief operating officer of the federal government’s Operation Warp Speed vaccine effort, said Saturday the initial supplies will be distributed among 636 locations nationwide, with 145 sites expected to get the doses Monday.

Another 425 sites should receive deliveries Tuesday, while the remaining 66 sites are slated to get their supplies Wednesday, Gen. Perna said.

Hospitals slated to get shipments have been weighing difficult decisions about which employees should get vaccinated first.

The hospitals have also been figuring how to give inoculated staff time off to deal with any side effects.

US President Donald Trump speaks during the Operation Warp Speed Vaccine Summit in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building adjacent to the White House in Washington, DC. Picture: AFP

Presbyterian Healthcare Services, the largest health system in New Mexico, braced for vaccinating employees at the same time it is being stretched due to a surge in COVID-19 cases.

The health system expects an initial shipment of 4,000 doses next week and would start vaccinating within a day of receiving them, according to Jeff Salvon-Harman, Presbyterian’s chief patient safety officer.

Dr Salvon-Harmon said he was amazed at how fast the vaccine had been developed, but the timing was a double-edged sword in New Mexico.

“On the one hand, the risk is greatest right now to our caregivers and everyone who works here because there is so much COVID in our facilities,” he said.

“But the timing couldn’t be worse in terms of competing priorities for manpower.”

The new coronavirus has infected more than 15.8 million people in the US, killing 295,500 while separating families, remaking work and battering the economy.

Cases have been increasing in recent weeks.

For months, health authorities have waited for the arrival of vaccines that could protect against COVID-19 and permit people to gather in groups and schools, businesses and other establishments to fully reopen.

The US Food and Drug Administration authorised the vaccine from Pfizer and German partner BioNTech SE BNTX -1.73% on Friday, after a 44,000-person trial found the shot to be 95% effective and generally well-tolerated.

The vaccine must be stored at ultracold temperatures because it uses a new gene-based technology.

Pfizer vaccines from Belgium are unloaded at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport. Picture: AFP

Partly for that reason, and partly for speed, the company created its own container to ship the doses while keeping them cold and secure. The company also set up its own distribution network, skipping traditional drug wholesalers in favour of logistics companies like United Parcel Service Inc. and FedEx Corp.

The US government is dividing up the supply among states, territories and jurisdictions based on their adult populations.

First in line will largely be the nation’s 21 million healthcare workers such as doctors and nurses treating COVID-19 patients, as well as residents of nursing homes and other long-term care facilities.

CVS Health Corp. and Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc. pharmacies will deliver and administer most vaccine doses at the 15,600 nursing homes and 29,000 assisted-living communities in the US.

Nine sites in Los Angeles County are expecting to get a total of approximately 83,000 doses and will start distributing the vaccine to 83 hospitals, which will then get them to frontline healthcare workers as quickly as possible, said Paul Simon, the county health department’s chief science officer.

The workers are being prioritised, he said, based on their risk of exposure to the coronavirus.

To make sure they return several weeks later for their second dose, the department and hospital officials have arranged for the newly vaccinated to get yellow cards noting the type of vaccine they got, the date they received it and when they need to come back.

In addition, Dr Simon said, a data system is set to store the information and can remind people via text and email when they are due for the second dose.

“Even with that, it’s going to be a complicated process,” he said.

In Colorado, 20 members of the National Guard were set to be deployed Sunday to seven sites in more rural parts of the state. Those sites have been set up to store some of the first 46,800 Pfizer doses being shipped to Colorado at the necessary ultracold temperature.

Brig. Gene. Scott Sherman said the Guard members had been trained to help to break down the bulk shipments of the doses into smaller batches, place them in ultracold storage containers and get them out to rural hospitals.

The Colorado National Guard was also co-ordinating with mail couriers to get the vaccines out to these facilities, and in some cases were readying to transport the doses themselves.

In addition, some 15 hospitals, most located in more populated areas of the state like the Denver metro area, were preparing to get shipments of the Pfizer vaccine directly.

Moncef Slaoui, chief adviser to the federal government’s coronavirus-response program, has said immunisation of 70% of the population would generate the herd immunity needed to protect even the unvaccinated, given the approximately 95% effectiveness of both the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines.

The Wall Street Journal