Carla K. Johnson and Nicky Forster present this morning some rather counterintuitive reports for the Associated Press, analyzing figures that suggest some of the states that tried to push vaccines faster have ended up with a slower vaccine deployment.
How is this possible? The explanation, as experts see it, is that the rapid expansion of eligibility in states like South Carolina and Florida caused an increase in demand too large to meet it and caused a serious mess. Vaccine supply proved inadequate or unpredictable, websites crashed and phone lines got stuck, spreading confusion, frustration and resignation among many people. They have now vaccinated smaller proportions of their population than those who moved more slowly and methodically, such as Hawaii and Connecticut.
“The infrastructure was simply not ready. He fell for it, ”said Dr. Rebecca Wurtz, an infectious disease physician and health data specialist at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health. She added: “In the rush to satisfy everyone, the governors satisfied few and frustrated many.”
The findings could contain an important lesson for the country’s governors, many of whom have announced dramatic expansions in recent days after being challenged by President Joe Biden so that all adults could be vaccinated on May 1. “
If you’re more focused and more focused, you can do a better job, ”said Sema Sgaier, executive director of Surgo Ventures, a nonprofit organization that conducted the analysis in collaboration with the Associated Press. if you have created the infrastructure to vaccinate all those people quickly “.
“It was a bit chaotic,” said Dr. Marcus Plescia, chief physician of the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials. “We created much more demand than there was supply. This underscored the system and this may have made the system less efficient. “
Plescia said the analysis suggests that “a more methodical, measured, prudent and priority-based approach despite people’s perception may be as effective or more efficient than opening things up and making it available to more people.”
In retrospect, health workers and residents of the residences were the easiest groups to vaccinate. Doses could be delivered where they lived and worked.
“We knew where they were and we knew who they were,” Wurtz said. As soon as the states went beyond these populations, it was harder to find the right people.