According to an analysis by Bloomberg News, many U.S. states and cities have a growing surplus of vaccines against Covid-19, a sign that in some places demand is declining before inoculating a large percentage of the population.
The data indicate that up to one in three doses are not used in some states. Appointments for shooting are often not taken, with few people signing up.
Bloomberg analyzed state and U.S. data since Monday, providing a snapshot of vaccine use before Johnson & Johnson filed millions of shots pending federal health officials’ investigation into rare cases of blood clots. blood. This pause is likely to fluctuate the number of unused shots, but will change state comparisons little.
Overall, demand remains strong. In the United States, 37% of people have received at least one dose and the country is one of the world leaders in vaccination. But even some states that are doing well are struggling with stubborn pockets where uptake is low.
In Virginia, for example, 83% of state-supplied vaccines have been used, but the number of people receiving shots clearly differs from city to city. This difference is especially noticeable in Charlottesville and Lynchburg, separated by an hour’s drive through 29 U.S. vineyards and open farmland.
“Virginia is a kind of microcosm of the country,” said Costi Sifri, director of epidemiology at UVA Health in Charlottesville. “We will have this same kind of challenge in every state in the country. How can the vaccine that will be produced geographically be closed?”
A health worker administers a dose of a Covid-19 vaccine at the Lynchburg Regional Vaccine Center.
Photographer: Carlos Bernate / Bloomberg
In Charlottesville, a predominantly Democratic area that houses the University of Virginia, vaccine appointments are hard to come by even with two mass clinics in the city. In Lynchburg, 70 miles south and dominated by conservative Liberty University, open appointments at an old TJ Maxx are easy to find. The disparity has led to vaccine tourism in the state, where residents of northern Virginia go south to make shots that would otherwise be left unused. The high availability of vaccines also indicates that areas such as Lynchburg could be left without residents willing to be vaccinated.
The Bloomberg vaccine tracker shows the percentage of administered doses that have been used in a state, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. By the end of February, with high demand for vaccines, only 19% of doses in the U.S. were unused, a sign that almost every dose administered was quickly injected into someone’s arm. Bloomberg calculated unused dose rates for this analysis using weekly averages, which are less volatile than overnight figures.
Doses are starting to build up
Many states use what they get, but the doses accumulate in others
Source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data collected by Bloomberg
There are now warning signs that vaccines are not being used. This is a concern for epidemiologists who argue that at least 75% of the country’s population must be protected before the virus can actually be contained.
Federal officials are in the early stages of rethinking distribution. So far vaccines have been distributed according to the population.
“We will go through stages as we vaccinate ever-increasing portions of populations, where it will make sense to continue to monitor where vaccines are needed, how vaccines are distributed, the best way to reach more people.” Andy Slavitt, senior adviser to the White House Covid Response team, said in late March.
Meanwhile, doses are accumulating. West Virginia – praised for its early firing – has gone from using all but a small percentage of the supply in mid-February to 26% of unused doses, an average daily of 352,000 unused doses over the past week. Some states have never implemented their vaccination strategy. Alabama, Georgia and Mississippi represent a band of southern states that have struggled to get supplies.
States do not control the entire distribution within their borders. Mississippi says it has used 77% of the doses it has requested. But when doses sent directly by the federal government to pharmacies and other locations are counted, only 65% of doses in the state have been used, according to the Bloomberg analysis.
Overall, the quartile of lower-yielding states has 14.1 million unused doses, meaning that 31% of the doses administered in these states have not yet been marked as used. In the best-performing state quartile, only 11% of doses were not used.
At the start of the vaccine, West Virginia focused on its older population and has now passed on to teens in the mid-1930s, where most new cases of Covid-19 appear, said Clay Marsh, Tsar of Covid -19 of the state.
“We’re seeing more incidents from more people who need more conviction or need more time to make their decision,” he said. “We are right in this interface to have more vaccine than arms to put them on.”
Kerry Gateley
Photographer: Carlos Bernate / Bloomberg
Statewide data can obscure what’s happening locally.
About 45% of Charlottesville’s 47,200 residents have received at least one dose, according to data from the Virginia Department of Health. Demand has remained high enough for the Blue Ridge Health District, which includes Charlottesville, to restrict access. It wasn’t until Monday that the district opened the requirements for people over the age of 16, in line with Gov. Ralph Northam’s goal of allowing everyone in the state to get a shot early next week.
In Lynchburg, eligibility officially opened to everyone on April 16 or higher. On April 5, even earlier. Even before, the restrictions were not overly enforced. However, only 29% of the city’s 82,000 residents have received at least one dose, according to data from the health department. If it were a state, the Lynchburg vaccine rate would be at the bottom, just above Alabama and Mississippi.
“At first we didn’t have enough vaccine, and now that we have a pretty good supply, the demand isn’t there,” said Kerry Gateley, health director of the Central Virginia health district where Lynchburg is located.
Vaccine-free pockets across the country allow the virus to spread and, perhaps worse, the ability to evolve. Experts worry that it will be a perfect recipe for virus variants.
“They have a chance to undo the gains we have worked so hard to achieve,” Sifri said.
Where are the unused doses
Some states still have more than 30% of the doses to use
Source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data collected by Bloomberg
At the start of the vaccination campaign, black Americans were the focus of concern about hesitation and access to the vaccine. New polls show that white evangelicals are now showing the strongest resistance.
For Gateley, this will be especially critical given the large evangelical community in Lynchburg. Freedom University, the city’s largest businessman, was founded by Southern Baptist pastor and televangelist Jerry Falwell, Sr. Liberty clashed with health officials at the start of the pandemic when it quickly brought students back to face-to-face classes. But the university also owns and rents a closed TJ Maxx store in the city for a mass vaccination clinic, Gateley said. Liberty rejected several requests for comment.
In Charlottesville, UVA Health has lent the Blue Ridge Health District a wealth of resources, including conducting one of the city’s mass clinics and helping it run 28 outreach events in February and March. That, and the region advocating for more doses, should help increase vaccinations, according to Ryan McKay, incident commander for Covid-19 in the Blue Ridge Health District.
“We anticipate that we will see a fairly large increase in the number of doses we administer,” McKay said.