The record-breaking Covid-19 vaccine was a triumph. So why does it take so long to vaccinate Americans?
The response begins with tens of millions of doses of Covid-19 vaccine that were not used in U.S. medical freezers during the first few weeks of release.
At launch, the federal government set aside much more doses for residences than the necessary facilities. A fragmented chain of communication between federal authorities sending doses and local sites that eventually injected them left vaccinators in the dark about how many patients they could schedule. Concerned about the limited supply, some hospitals and health departments withheld doses to make sure they had enough to administer second vaccines to staff or to meet appointments, creating a bottleneck at the exit.
Vaccines are intensifying. But the first stumbles can spread the pandemic and leave more people unprotected. Health officials say new coronavirus variants that appear to be spreading more easily make the distribution of vaccines more urgent.
The Trump administration invested heavily in the rapid development of vaccines, but stopped the last mile of getting gunfire in states and localities. This approach resulted in multiple, sometimes contradictory, systems, and did not ensure that local sites had information about the vaccine shipments they needed to quickly manage the shots.