Consider This from NPR - Biden Administration: 'It Will Be Months' Before Widespread Vaccine Availability

Episode Date: January 27, 2021

President Biden said Tuesday that the federal government's vaccine distribution program is "in worse shape than we anticipated." His administration's coronavirus response team held its first public briefing on Wednesday where officials detailed plans to increase vaccine supply and capacity, but also said it will be months before anyone who wants a vaccine can get one. The lack of supply has led to different challenges in different areas of the country. NPR gathered three reporters to learn more: Blake Farmer with Nashville Public Radio, Amelia Templeton with Oregon Public Broadcasting, and Veronica Zaragovia with WLRN in Miami. Additional reporting this episode from Georgia Public Broadcasting's Grant Blankenskip, who reported on efforts by Georgia residents to get a vaccine. In participating regions, you'll also hear a local news segment that will help you make sense of what's going on in your community.Email us at [e-mail] more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Here's a quick story of two attempts to get a vaccine with two different outcomes. Well, I was hoping to get a shot this morning, but there seems to be some confusion as to whether or not there's a vaccine here or are they going to do it by appointment only? A few weeks back in central Georgia, Larry Dillard drove up to his local county health department with high hopes. It had been listed as a no appointment drive-up location, but when he got there, a sign at the edge of the lot said vaccinations were canceled. So it's just been really frustrating. There needs to be some other method of getting the word out to people. About an hour away, Monica Miller was also frustrated. Her mother

in Crawford County couldn't even get through to the local health department on the phone. So I was thinking to myself, OK, we're just going to keep trying. Miller really wanted her mom and dad to get a vaccine, and she thought there has to be an app for that. I went to my app store and I found an app that said Redial app. The Redial app automated her phone to dial the county health department, wait 10 seconds, and then try again. She called more than 400 times over the next six hours. So finally, about 345, it picked up and it says you are placed in queue.

After that, it was quick. She got appointments for her parents at a vaccine site about 40 miles away. That's the reality of vaccine distribution in America right now. In many places, it's not enough to be eligible. You might need a determined, tech-savvy relative willing to spend six hours calling the same phone number. All for the privilege of traveling 80 miles round trip twice because there are two shots. I don't know how you deal with all that, but, you know, we put a man on the moon in the 60s. We ought to be able to figure this out.

The Biden administration has promised to figure things out, but the president has said that in the last week, a clearer picture of the challenge emerged. Once we arrived, a vaccine program is in worse shape than we anticipated or expected. Coming up, how the slow vaccine rollout is being felt differently around the country. From NPR, I'm Adi Cornish. It's Wednesday, January 27th.

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And right now, having science news you can trust from variants to vaccines is essential. NPR Shortwave has your back. About 10 minutes every weekday, listen and subscribe to Shortwave, the daily science podcast from NPR. It's Consider This from NPR. Thank you for taking the time to be here. Good afternoon. There was big vaccine news on Tuesday when President Biden announced that the federal government was ordering 200 million more doses of COVID-19 vaccine. And that increases the total vaccine order in the United States by 50 percent, from 400 million order to 600 million. The Biden administration says that will be enough to fully vaccinate 300 million Americans by around the end of the summer, beginning of the fall.

Assuming those doses come through as planned, that only takes care of one problem, supply. The second problem the U.S. has right now is that the capacity to distribute that supply is just too limited. We are taking action to increase supply and increase capacity. But even so, it will be months before everyone who wants a vaccine will be able to get one. Andy Slavitt is a senior advisor on the White House coronavirus response team, which held its first public briefing Wednesday. He said basically the federal government simply needs to spend more money to get more vaccines distributed. An essential ingredient to increasing the administration of vaccines is passage of the American Rescue Plan. The Biden administration's proposal for a pandemic

relief package is just beginning to be worked over in Congress. And in the meantime, the administration is taking smaller steps it says will help. Those include launching 100 community vaccination centers, standing up mobile clinics in hard-to-reach areas, and increasing the supply of vaccine to states by 16 percent. That's an increase that had been expected as manufacturing capacity went up. I would love to tell you that we inherited a situation where there were stockpiles and stockpiles of vaccines sitting there. That is not the case. And it is our job to level both with the governors and with the public. According to the latest CDC data, nearly 20 million people have

received at least one shot. Three and a half million have been fully vaccinated. So let's say the goal is by July 4th to achieve something close to herd immunity. Well, a report by the Kaiser Family Foundation laid out that hypothetical. And to vaccinate at least 70 percent of the country by July 4th, the U.S. would need to give 2.4 million doses of vaccine per day. And that's about double the current rate. So the story nationwide? Not enough vaccines to meet demand. But that story is being felt in different ways depending on where you are. NPR reached out to three reporters from around the country to understand the different realities in different places.

Amelia Templeton from Oregon Public Broadcasting, Blake Farmer of Nashville Public Radio, and Veronica Zargovia from WLRN in Miami. They spoke to NPR's Elsa Chang. Hello to all of you. Hi. Hi, Elsa. All right, Veronica Zargovia, let's start with you. You're in Florida, which was among the first days to start vaccinating seniors. And for a while, there were these photos of seniors camped out in these long lines that I mentioned,

hoping to get a vaccine. Is it still that hard for seniors there to get vaccinated? It's still quite hard. The chaos has included some seniors who are traveling here from other states. They've been driving down from New York, even flying in from countries like Argentina. The state's Department of Health, its own count shows that almost 50,000 people who don't live

here in Florida have gotten vaccinated so far. And that's caused a big uproar. Right. So what's being done about that? Well, now Florida is urging vaccine providers to ask for proof of Florida residency. But one big concern about asking for that proof of residency is that it may leave out low-income or homeless people. You don't have to show a driver's license, but many people don't have their name on a utility bill or a lease or something like that. You know, Veronica, that's interesting. This is Blake in Tennessee because here there's not a lot of checking IDs. And some of that is on purpose since many seniors might not have one.

And the state wants to vaccinate undocumented immigrants. So the ID present a real challenge there. You know, it's mostly the honor system right now. But again, that's just here. Right, right. It varies state by state. So in Florida, Veronica, how is all of this working out? Like, are seniors who live there and can prove that they live there, are they getting vaccinated? Seniors are actually still confused and scrambling.

For the most part, it's vaccines by Twitter. You need to be scrolling at all hours of the day or night to see if appointments open up, if they come up here or there. And I spoke to Annette Linder about it. She's 78 and lives near Palm Beach. I have been on the phone from 6 a.m. early in the morning and just dialing everywhere that I could dial. And it was just awful not being able to get through. Let's talk about equity and fairness here because these have been issues on so many levels when it comes to vaccine distribution. And I want to bring in Amelia Templeton in Oregon for this because it sounds like the debate there is surrounding the fairness of putting teachers at the front of the line ahead

of seniors who are more likely to get seriously ill from COVID. What is the thinking in Oregon? Oregon has been pretty quick to get vaccines into nursing homes and assisted living, but seniors who live on their own are still waiting. The governor had initially proposed vaccinating teachers and seniors at the same time, but then she reversed course and said there just isn't enough vaccine to do that yet. So teachers start this week and seniors 80 and up will be the first to go later in February. Well, how has the governor there, Kate Brown, explained this decision? It was about balancing the needs of different parts of the population, she said.

Oregon has taken a uniquely sort of hard line on keeping schools closed to reduce community spread of COVID-19. And she's really framed it as, you know, families have been sacrificing for months to protect our vulnerable seniors. Now she needs to prioritize the needs and the health of kids and wants to use the vaccine to support a push to reopen schools. How has the public there been responding to this decision so far? Well, there's been widespread outrage. You know, seniors are writing to the governor. They're saying, I'm tired of being holed up in my house, pointing out that they are far and away the most likely to die from COVID-19. Teachers have said even if they get vaccinated, their students can't be.

And, you know, they could bring the virus home to their unvaccinated parents or grandparents. And meanwhile, the hospital association here is protesting that the governor has set too aggressive of a timetable for vaccinating both groups. They are warning people that whether you are a teacher or a senior, you may have to wait a long time to get the shot and saying, please don't call us and ask when. Yeah, let's talk about hospitals because a lot of the burden of getting people vaccinated seems to be falling on hospitals, even to vaccinate people who are not their patients or their staff. Blake, what's been happening in Tennessee? Well, you know, they've kind of been sidelined a bit here in the last week.

They were using leftover vaccine they didn't need for their health care workers and calling in their elderly patients already in their systems. But that left a lot of people who don't happen to have a doctor in one of the big health systems at a considerable disadvantage. So now the state has said hospitals won't get any more vaccine unless they open access to all comers. So instead, in Tennessee, local health departments are really in the lead now. Well, how are local health departments there handling this huge scheduling task? Well, I mean, appointments have been kind of tricky because the local health departments don't know until almost the day of how much vaccine they're going to be getting from the state. So now most have moved to a system where seniors put their name on a list and just wait for a call. And that call, I'm finding, often comes

with very little lead time. I talked to 86-year-old Carolyn Moser in a church parking lot that was being used as a drive-thru vaccination site. The lady from the health department called me this morning and said, can you be at College Hills Church of Christ this afternoon by 2.30, and I said, yes, I can. So here we are. So there's one customer pleasantly surprised by this just-in-time system. Of course, there are many more feeling like they've been left out because they've heard nothing for weeks. Well, what about seniors who don't drive or who might need public transportation? Well, this is a serious concern when it comes to equity. This last minute scheduling favors those with some flexibility and frankly, car keys.

There's been some discussion elsewhere, like San Antonio, Texas, of finding a way to use Meals on Wheels maybe to get vaccines to people. But right now, there's not a lot of energy going into outreach because the supply of vaccine is still so limited and states aren't getting bigger shipments like they were expecting to at this point. Well, if I could just very quickly from each of you, give me a sense if you see any of these problems that we've identified with vaccine distribution, if you see these problems easing up anytime soon. Veronica,

let's start with you. Well, Elsa, the vaccination options in Florida keep changing and still depend on trying your luck on the phone or online. So I don't see improvements happening in the short term. Amelia? I think if the federal government could guarantee a more predictable supply of the vaccine, that would go a long way. If people know what their place in line is, it makes it easier to wait. And as we move to younger patients, they may be a bit more tech savvy, but scheduling is going to be even more complicated because most of them will have a job that they go to every day. That was Blake Farmer of Nashville Public Radio, from Oregon Public Broadcasting, Amelia Templeton, and from WLRN in Miami, Veronica Zargovia. Additional reporting in this episode from Grant Blankenship with Georgia Public Broadcasting.

You're listening to Consider This from NPR. I'm Adi Cornish.