The local funding crisis threatens the deployment of vaccines in the US

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Seattle public health officials have so little COVID-19 funding on hand that they worry they will have to close some virus testing sites as they mount a campaign to dose its 2.3 million residents with Pfizer Inc and Moderna Inc. Vaccines

King County, which represents a larger Seattle, has $ 14 million in COVID-19 funding for 2021, roughly what it spends in a month to manage public test sites and other services, and a fraction of the aid COVID-19 emergency $ 87 million it received In 2020, said Ingrid Ulrey, director of public health policies in King County.

“We’ve been needles the last three or four months, watching what’s happening at the federal level, waiting, watching,” he said. When newly approved federal funds are reduced to their level, he expects them to be lower than this year, insufficient and too late.

“It’s surprisingly low,” he added. “We have a huge, daunting, unprecedented task of delivering the vaccine.” King County runs the risk of not being able to hire up to 40 additional nurses and administrators needed to begin the next wave of public immunizations.

In U.S. counties, the funding crisis has limited the recruitment of staff needed for vaccines, delayed the establishment of vaccination centers and undermined efforts to raise public awareness, officials told Reuters.

The federal government spent more than $ 10 billion to accelerate the development of the COVID-19 vaccine, but so far has disbursed few funds for its distribution, although it pushed the responsibility for the actual vaccines to state governments and premises.

A new $ 2.3 trillion pandemic aid and spending package provides $ 8.75 million to states to help with vaccination, in line with what state and local officials had requested, but months later of the distribution should have begun.

“The federal government has distributed the vaccines to the states. It is now up to the states to administer. Move on! U.S. President Donald Trump tweeted on Wednesday.

The promised wave of recently approved vaccines has been just a wave: about 2.8 million Americans have been shot, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, far less than the 20 million promised by the federal government for December.

About 10 million of the 12.4 million doses the government has distributed to states are unused, and on Tuesday, President-elect Joe Biden said it would take years, not months, to vaccinate most Americans. at the current rate.

CVS and Walgreens hospitals and pharmacies are in charge of the first wave of vaccinations for health care workers and long-term care residents. But local health systems will play a major role in immunizing the next biggest waves and will be critical for groups such as the uninsured, the uninsured, the homeless and others.

Claire Hannan, director of the Association of Immunization Managers, a trade group in local public health departments, said the shortage of local public health staff will become increasingly difficult as vaccination efforts ‘extend to essential workers and older Americans.

Brandon Meline, chief logistics officer for the Champaign-Urbana Public Health District in Illinois, said his district was taking advantage of a fund for rainy days until more federal assistance arrives.

“We have four weeks of major planning and two weeks of active distribution and we don’t have a secure funding flow,” Meline said in an interview on Christmas Eve as she waited for a vaccine package to arrive.

Coconino County, Arizona’s largest, needs to hire about 20 people to run vaccination clinics and reach residents who live hours of hospitalization, including some at the bottom of the Grand Canyon, said Kim Musselman, director of county health. human services department.

Musselman said his nurses are cramped as they offer the free vaccination clinic he set up in Coconino County and will fight to keep it, let alone to set up additional clinics, without further funding. The state has not indicated that help is being obtained.

“Have they told us, because we’ve been asked repeatedly, is there any reimbursement of public assistance for vaccine-related expenses? And they’ve kept telling us no right now,” he said.