Along with other states, Colorado will receive fewer doses of the Pfizer coronavirus vaccine than expected, which Governor Jared Polis blamed on the federal government’s inability to send available supplies.
The state expected to receive 67,860 doses next week, but now expects only 39,780 doses, Polis said at a news conference Friday.
This is despite the fact that each vial of the vaccine apparently contains six, instead of the five planned doses, Polis said.
“I really call on the federal government to take out the vaccines: Pfizer said they are sitting in a warehouse waiting for shipping instructions,” Polis said. “The federal government should receive instructions today.”
As a result of the shortage, some health workers will have to delay their first vaccination, Polis said.
Twenty-five thousand of the doses to be received next week will be given to residents and employees of long-term care facilities, while 14,000 doses will go to hospitals for front-line health workers, Polis said, adding that the state still expects to receive 95,600 doses of the Modern vaccine next week.
So far, 12,123 Colorado residents have been vaccinated, according to a new vaccine board released Friday by the state.
Colorado is experiencing a steady downward trend in new COVID cases “that are not commonly seen across the country at this time,” said state epidemiologist Dr. Rachel Herlihy, who added that the state has ” bent the curve “after Thanksgiving and” begins to see clear improvements “in hospitalizations.
On Friday, the state registered 3,693 new cases of COVID, 1,403 hospitalized with the virus and a total of 3,321 deaths, Polis said.
The state’s positivity rate falls, to about 7 percent, from a high of nearly 13 percent in mid-November, he said. This spring, the World Health Organization recommended a rate of no more than 5% to communities to reopen businesses and other activities.
One in 59 Colorado residents is estimated to be contagious, Polis said, compared to estimates of one in 40 earlier this month.
In El Paso County, hospitalizations this week were nearly half what they were the week before, the county health department said Friday. According to a press release, the county recorded 82 hospitalizations between Dec. 11 and 17, from Dec. 160 and Dec. 4 and 10. According to data available on its website, the county has seen a 30% drop in 14-day incidence levels. Deaths have also dropped, from an average of seven days a week on Dec. 8 to three-and-a-half on Thursday.
State officials have been left wondering why shipments of the Pfizer vaccine, the first approved by the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for delivery, are under initial estimates when the company says it has warehouses in its warehouse.
“This is disturbing and frustrating,” Washington State Gov. Jay Inslee, a Democrat, wrote on Twitter after learning from CDC that the state’s allocation would be reduced by 40 percent. “We need accurate and predictable numbers to plan and ensure – success on the ground.”
California, where the explosion of cases is bringing intensive care units to the breaking point, will receive 160,000 fewer vaccine doses than state officials had predicted next week.
It has also been said that Missouri, Michigan, Iowa, Connecticut, Georgia, Illinois, Kansas, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire and Indiana expect smaller shipments.
In Washington, DC, two senior Trump administration officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said states will receive full assignments, but misunderstandings about the supply of vaccines and changes in the timing of delivery can be confusing.
One official said the initial number of available doses provided to states were projections based on manufacturers ’information, not fixed assignments.
The two officials also said the changes the federal government made to the delivery schedule, at the request of the governors, may contribute to a wrong impression that fewer doses arrive. The key change is to space the delivery of weekly state assignments over several days to make distribution more manageable.
“They’ll get their weekly assignment, it just won’t reach them one day,” an official said.
Pfizer made it clear that in terms of production, nothing has changed.
“Pfizer has not had any production issues with our COVID-19 vaccine and any shipment containing the vaccine is pending or delayed,” spokesman Eamonn Nolan said in an email. “We continue to ship our orders to locations specified by the U.S. government.”
The company said in a written statement that it “successfully shipped all the 2.9 million doses that the U.S. government ordered us to the locations specified by them. We have millions more doses sitting in our warehouse, however, at As of now, we have not received any shipping instructions for additional doses. ”
Senior administration officials said Pfizer’s statement about the doses awaiting shipping instructions, while technically accurate, conveniently omits the explanation: it was planned that way.
Federal officials said Pfizer pledged to provide 6.4 million doses of its vaccine in the first week after approval. But Federal Operation Warp Speed already planned to distribute just 2.9 million of those doses immediately. Another 2.9 million should be kept in the Pfizer warehouse to ensure that people vaccinated in the first week can get their second shot later to make the protection fully effective. Finally, the government maintains an additional 500,000 doses as a reserve against unforeseen problems.
Pfizer said it remains confident it can deliver up to 50 million doses worldwide this year and up to 1.3 billion doses by 2021.
The United States on Friday added a second COVID-19 vaccine to its arsenal on Friday as the outbreak goes through its deadliest phase to date, with the nation regularly recording more than 3,000 deaths a day.
The vaccine developed by Moderna received FDA approval on Friday, paving the way for its use to begin as early as Monday in the largest vaccination campaign in U.S. history.
The goal is to vaccinate approximately 80% of the U.S. population by mid-2021 to finally conquer the outbreak.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.