Pace of vaccinations falls short of estimates, prompting alerts

It is unlikely that the Trump administration will reach its goal of vaccinating 20 million Americans against COVID-19 by the end of the year. A CDC tracker reveals that only about 2 million people have been vaccinated so far. Meanwhile, experts are urging the federal government to accelerate the rate of immunizations and to give more support to state health departments. Josh Michaud, associate director for global health policy at the Kaiser Family Foundation, says: “States were kind of left on their own, like so many things across the course of this pandemic. What we’re seeing is the fruits of that patchwork approach.” Claire Hannan, executive director of the Association of Immunization Managers, which represents states’ vaccination officials, says the Trump administration had a “misperception” that “shipping the vaccine was success,” instead of following through to vaccinate people. She asserts the estimate of 20 million vaccinations by the end of the year was “way off to start with.” Hannan called for greater communication with the federal government about allocations and other issues, and believes making the vaccinations available to more people would be beneficial. She observes, “You’re going to have states open it up even though they’re still vaccinating health care workers because they don’t want vaccine sitting on shelves.”