It has been no secret that America’s vaccine rollout was chaotic from the start. At the end of January, all 50 states were reporting vaccine shortages. Our fragile healthcare system, already fracturing under one global crisis, simply does not have any resources to distribute vaccines. Today, the U.S. is falling behind Israel, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom, and Bahrain in percentage of population vaccinated, despite having ordered 1.2 billion doses of vaccine and working closely with vaccine companies.
Clearly, then, vaccine rollout isn’t working. Several issues have been making it hard for the government to produce and distribute vaccines at high efficiency. One main issue is unfamiliarity. Vaccines in the past have taken years or even decades to develop, test, and produce. However, the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines have been developed in less than 9 months. While this doesn’t mean that the vaccines are unsafe (they have been reviewed by multiple scientific boards and the FDA), it does mean that the government did not have enough time to create a comprehensive vaccine plan. In order for vaccine rollout to work, vaccine rollout needs to become an even higher priority for the government, who must work closely with states and vaccine manufacturers.
Vaccine supply has also been an issue on every level of the process, from singular vaccination centers to the level of the federal government. This problem is hard to combat because eligibility for the vaccine has been increasing every day. But the future for vaccine availability is looking up. On February 11, the Biden administration announced that it had secured 200 million more doses of the vaccine. Supply of vaccines will most likely be less of a problem on the federal level, as Moderna and Pfizer have announced that they will be able to deliver 300 million more doses by July, and the Biden administration has announced that it has enough vaccine to vaccinate the entire country.
So then, why are states and counties facing shortages? Mostly due to a lack of cooperation. With operation Warp Speed, the federal government was able to help companies create and manufacture vaccines faster. However, distribution of vaccines on many levels was left largely to state and county level officials, creating a decentralized distribution system. The federal government shipped doses to states, but then largely stepped out of the process. A comprehensive vaccine plan with cooperation from all levels of government would help alleviate this problem.
Public health departments without adequate funding, large state deficits, and multiple budget cuts have left local health officials stripped of the resources they need to set up vaccination sites and distribute vaccines. Stimulus bills passed by Congress have helped provide funding for these departments, but this will need to continue in order for small local governments to have what they need. Further, overwhelmed hospitals simply don’t have the resources to vaccinate people on top of treating pandemic victims. Hospitals, however, don’t need to be vaccination hubs, especially when they’re dealing with their own crises. Separate vaccination sites, set up and staffed by state and federal governments would reduce the load on hospitals.
One common vaccine issue which has become prevalent with the COVID vaccines is the widespread fear of the vaccine. According to the New York Times, more than a quarter of Americans say that they would probably or definitely not take a COVID vaccine. To some extent, this is understandable—being afraid about a vaccine with shorter development time is not entirely illogical. To combat this, however, hospitals and healthcare facilities need to have vaccine education programs set up to help people understand how the vaccine works and why it is safe. This problem should also lessen in severity as more people see relatives and coworkers get vaccinated.
To conclude, problems abound in our vaccine rollout problem, but these problems also have solutions that the government can use to give more people access to vaccines faster. Already, there are signs of improvement, as vaccine rollout has sped up in all 50 states, with an average of 1.72 million doses administered each day, as of mid February. Cases have dropped by nearly half compared to a month ago, and the vaccination rate in the U.S. is rising sharply, with about 15 million fully vaccinated people as of February 16. A world without COVID is a distant memory now, but if we can get vaccine rollout back on track, it could come faster than we think.