How the government delayed vaccinations

See Behind America’s Botched Vaccination Rollout: Fragmented Communication, Misallocated Supply by Sarah Krouse, Brianna Abbott & Jared S. Hopkins of The WSJ. Excerpts:

"The record-fast creation of Covid-19 vaccines was a triumph. So why is it taking so long to vaccinate Americans?

The answer starts with tens of millions of Covid-19 vaccine doses that sat unused in medical freezers across the U.S. in the early weeks of the rollout.

In the launch, the federal government set aside far more doses for nursing homes than the facilities needed. A fragmented chain of communication between federal authorities dispatching doses and the local sites ultimately injecting them left the vaccinators in the dark about how many patients they could schedule."

"More than 16 million of the 72.4 million vaccine doses distributed by the U.S. government hadn’t been used as of Wednesday (Feb 17)"

"Among the reasons public-health officials cite for the slow start: Many local health departments and hospitals lack access to the federal technology platform, created by Palantir Technologies and called Tiberius, that was meant to keep officials apprised of their deliveries.

Without knowing when or how many doses would arrive, some vaccination site operators have limited appointments until they had doses in hand, which meant vaccines sit unused for days until appointments are booked and dose-giving events are finalized."

"States that needed more help to avoid hiccups in the early days of the rollout could have asked for it, he said, but none did."

"One of the biggest reasons behind unused doses, state health officials said, was that federal officials overestimated how many doses should be set aside for vulnerable nursing-home residents and staff."

"In Idaho, for example, state health officials late last month discovered that tens of thousands of extra doses were sitting in pharmacy freezers or set aside for the state by the federal government but not yet used.

To project the number of doses needed, the CDC last year had collected data from participating states on the number of beds at elderly care facilities. Federal health officials figured there would be as many staff as residents, assuming the typical staffing ratio in long-term-care facilities, so it set aside twice as many doses as beds counted."

"Yet the bed counts overstated the actual number of residents living in the facilities because some died during the pandemic and others left to live with family members"

"The estimates also miscalculated demand for doses because significant numbers of residents and staff wound up opting out of being vaccinated."