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 Fewer than half of the nearly 38 million vaccine doses shipped to
date by the federal government have actually made it into the arms
of Americans, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
(CDC) reported on Thursday.
Some individual states have lagged behind with just a third or 40%
of their vaccine allotments being administered as of Thursday,
marking the one-year anniversary of the first locally transmitted
COVID-19 case documented in the United States.
But West Virginia, a mostly rural state of nearly 2 million
residents known for its rugged mountain terrain, stands far above
the national average, using 72% of the doses it has received to
date, CDC data shows. Only North Dakota, home to fewer than 800,000
people, has done that well.
West Virginia also ranks a close second behind Alaska in terms of
how much of its population, 9.3%, has been inoculated. Alaska, much
larger and more remote geographically, has administered at least the
first of the two-dose COVID vaccine to 9.8% of its residents, by
comparison.
Biden, who assumed office on Wednesday, has vowed to rapidly
accelerate the effort in the weeks ahead, setting a goal of
inoculating 100 million Americans in the first 100 days of his
presidency.
He and others have blamed the faltering vaccine rollout in part on
scarce funding for state and local governments and the lack of a
federal game plan from the administration of former President Donald
Trump.
GOING LOCAL
Meanwhile, the hyper-local approach taken by West Virginia is being
credited with the progress it has achieved.
West Virginia opted out of the distribution partnership between the
federal government and two national pharmacy chains, CVS and
Walgreens, for the immunization of residents at nursing homes and
long-term care facilities. Instead, the state relied on a network of
independent pharmacies and by the end of last month had offered the
vaccine to all congregant-care residents.
John Beckner, senior director of strategic initiatives at the
National Community Pharmacists Association, said that local approach
helped build trust.
"It's a complicated situation when you go into a nursing home,"
Beckner told Reuters. "These folks are, for the most part,
bedridden, they've got complex health conditions. Seeing a familiar
face, a trusted face, goes a long way."
West Virginia pharmacies have since moved on to school teachers,
whose inoculations have likewise been coordinated at the state
level, before opening up vaccines to a wider segment of the public
through individually scheduled appointments.
"Every dose that arrives in the state, they have pre-planned who is
to get that," said Heidi Romero, a third-generation pharmacist at
Griffith & Feil Drug in Kenova, West Virginia.
While West Virginia may lead most other states in the uptake of its
initial vaccine supplies and in the portion of its population
receiving their first shots, it pales in comparison to more populous
states in the aggregate.
[to top of second column] |
 CDC figures show California,
for example, has administered 37% of its vaccine
supplies, with initial doses reaching just 3.8%
of its 40 million residents. But that translates
into shots for more than 1.3 million people,
compared with 136,000 injections in West
Virginia.
URGENCY GROWS
The urgency of vaccines has grown with the
emergence of new coronavirus variants believed
to be more transmissible even as infections,
hospitalizations and deaths continued to climb,
though at rates leveling off from weeks of
surging virtually unchecked.
The United States reported 4,342 COVID-19 deaths on
Wednesday alone, the highest single-day total since the pandemic
began, according to a Reuters analysis of public health data,
bringing the cumulative number of U.S. lives lost to more than
405,000 out of some 24.3 million known infections.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation's leading infectious disease
specialist, said Thursday that COVID case loads may be about to
plateau, and predicted that most Americans would likely be
vaccinated by the middle of this year.
Donnalie Hope, 78, of Petersburg, West Virginia, said she received
her first vaccine dose on Jan. 14 after the health department in a
neighboring county telephoned and instructed her to go to the
National Guard Armory in nearby Moorefield.
She said
she had been keen to schedule an appointment for weeks.
"I called every day. I said I'm here. I'm waiting," Hope said. "They
were very kind. I explained that I didn't want to get ahead of
anybody. I just wanted to get in line."
In New York City, Councilman Mark Levine said municipal health
authorities were forced to cancel tens of thousands of vaccine
appointments this week. He blamed a federal supply chain failing to
keep pace with demand among top-priority recipients, including
healthcare workers, the elderly and essential front-line workers.
"We are receiving about 100,000 doses every week in a city where 2.5
million people are eligible, and even that low number has been
unstable and unreliable," he said. "We are so far behind the pace we
need to be vaccinating at."
(This story corrects to add dropped word 'before' in paragraph 12.)
(Reporting by Peter Szekely and Maria Caspani in New York, Nathan
Layne in Wilton, Connecticut and Barbara Goldberg in Maplewood, New
Jersey; Additional reporting by Sharon Bernstein in Sacramento,
California and Dan Whitcomb in Los Angeles; Writing by Maria Caspani
and Steve Gorman; Editing by Daniel Wallis)
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