|
 Shapiro said he has spent hours calling multiple health agencies and
making fruitless computer searches, an experience familiar to many
people across the United States, as the days-old administration of
President Joe Biden races to bring the country's slow, chaotic
vaccine rollout up to speed.
"Why not make it easy?" asked Shapiro, who is also concerned about
his wife because of medical conditions that would make her
particularly vulnerable to the virus. "Have it in your neighborhood.
Set up an appointment, get your shot and be done."
The United States is the nation hardest-hit by COVID-19, with 24.51
million cases and 409,987 deaths by early Friday morning. More than
4,000 Americans died of the disease on Thursday for the second day
in a row.
Even so, vaccine rollout, which the administration of former
President Donald Trump left to the states to carry out without a
federal blueprint or sufficient funding, has proven to be choppy.
From California, where distribution has varied from county to
county, to New York where the largest city in the nation is running
low on supply, states and healthcare providers have struggled to
acquire, store and distribute vaccines.
"We’re burning through our supply," New York Mayor Bill de Blasio
posted on Twitter on Friday. "We need more doses IMMEDIATELY so we
can protect the most vulnerable residents in our city. We need more
doses so we can fight back."
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said just 67% of healthcare workers
in New York have received a vaccine dose and he warned that if the
federal government does not find a way to quickly ramp up
production, everyone would suffer.
"The hospital workers are the people who, if they get sick, the
hospital capacity will collapse,” Cuomo said at a news conference.
“If the hospital capacity collapses, we have to close the economy.”
In New Jersey, Governor Phil Murphy said the state's vaccination
program had managed to get 70% of its vaccine supply into people's
arms, but that a federal program within the state to help nursing
home residents had distributed only 10% of its supply.
The country's top infectious disease expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci, said
on Friday the federal government had put too much of the
responsibility for distributing the vaccine on state governments.
"States were doing things that clearly were not the right direction
- and that's unfortunate," Fauci said on CNN.
Instead, he said, the administration should collaborate with the
states to help them plan their rollouts and make sure that vaccines
got into people's arms.
[to top of second column] |
 DISTRIBUTION CHALLENGES
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, which marked
the one-year anniversary of the first locally
transmitted COVID-19 case documented in the
United States.
A key problem is organizing the distribution of
vaccines to smaller clinics and pharmacies -
rather than just to large medical centers and
retail pharmaceutical chains.
In California, only a handful of independent
pharmacies have been able to acquire vaccines
for their customers - generally only in rural
areas where the big chain stores are not
present, said Sonya Frausto, a pharmacist in the
state capital of Sacramento.
Shapiro, who owns an independent pharmacy in
downtown Los Angeles, said customers have been
calling daily seeking vaccines, but he has to
tell them he has no supply.
He and his wife finally made appointments to
receive a vaccine on Saturday, after repeated
phone calls and hours on hold led them to
healthcare giant Kaiser Permanente. The Shapiros
are not Kaiser members, but the nonprofit is
offering them shots nonetheless, Jerry Shapiro
said.
In Sacramento, 65-year-old restaurateur Jami
Goldstene would feel a lot safer at her
public-facing job if she could get a vaccine.
She is technically eligible because of her age,
but has yet to be offered an appointment - or
even find a way to make one - despite hours on
the phone and the internet.
"It's very frustrating," she said. "I want to be
over with it. I want to feel safe again."
(Reporting by Sharon Bernstein in Sacramento,
Calif.; Additional reporting by Barbara Goldberg
and Maria Caspani in New York, Lisa Lambert in
Washington, Brad Brooks in Lubbock, Tex., and
Anurag Maan in Bengaluru; Editing by Frank
McGurty and Matthew Lewis)
[© 2021 Thomson Reuters. All rights
reserved.] Copyright 2021 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Thompson Reuters is solely responsible for this content |
