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 The biggest supply boost has come from Johnson & Johnson. Shipments
of the one-shot vaccine had been slow to ramp up since its late
February authorization as the company waited for regulatory
clearance of a key U.S. factory. Pfizer Inc also has boosted output
of its vaccine, doubling batch sizes and shortening production time.
Officials from more than half a dozen states including Vermont,
Idaho and New Jersey told Reuters that increased vaccine shipments
will allow them to accelerate efforts to inoculate the elderly and
front-line workers, and in some cases to open shots to all adult
residents earlier than expected.
"The increasing allotment of vaccine by the Biden administration is
making it possible for us to speed up our vaccination timetable,"
said Ben Truman, a spokesman for Vermont's department of public
health.
Vermont has now decided to offer vaccines to all adults on April 16,
a month sooner than planned, he said.
The U.S. government boosted its weekly allocations of COVID-19 doses
by more than 20% to 27 million last week. That includes 4 million
J&J vaccine doses, up from only a few hundred thousand in weeks
prior.
The White House expects that to surge even further over the next
week, with plans to deliver around 11 million of the J&J shots. If
shipments of the Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna Inc vaccines remain
constant, that should put the total number of weekly shots at more
than 34 million.
And Pfizer's shipments to states has increased, jumping about 25%
last week from the week prior and around 45% since the beginning of
the month, according to data from the U.S. Centers for Disease
Prevention and Control (CDC).
The United States has been hovering at a seven-day average of around
2.5 million shots in arms each day for most of the second half of
March as the federal government worked to overcome supply
bottlenecks. Vermont expects the increased shot deliveries to allow
it to speed vaccinations of priority groups such as teachers and
people with chronic health problems that put them at risk for severe
COVID-19, Truman said.
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 SHOTS FOR ALL
The higher allotments of J&J shots, which can be
stored in a standard refrigerator and immunize
people with one shot, could be especially useful
for getting vaccines to hard-to-reach and
underserved groups, officials from New Jersey
and Vermont told Reuters.
Indiana is using its J&J shot allotments to set
up a mass vaccination center at Indianapolis
Motor Speedway during the first half of April, a
spokeswoman said. Ohio is planning to use mobile
vaccination clinics to get J&J shots to harder
to reach people. Residents in
Idaho are actively seeking out J&J's single-dose vaccine over the
two-dose Pfizer or Moderna alternatives, said Zachary Clark,
spokesman for Idaho's public health agency, despite data suggesting
J&J's shot is somewhat less effective at preventing illness. He
added that Idaho's allocation of J&J shots it still much lower than
the other vaccines.
About half of U.S. states plan to begin offering shots to all
residents over the age of 16 in April, ahead of the Biden
administration's target date of May 1 for widespread vaccine
availability.
However, Wisconsin officials said they are waiting to make sure the
federal government can sustain the increased shipments before
committing to a faster rollout.
"We’d like to see more vaccine and more currently eligible people
vaccinated before we move to general population," Jennifer Miller, a
spokeswoman for Wisconsin's public health agency, said in an email.
The companies making the three authorized COVID-19 vaccines have
committed to providing the U.S. government with 240 million doses by
Wednesday.
(Reporting by Carl O'Donnell and Michael Erman; Editing by Caroline
Humer and Bill Berkrot)
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