States struggle for control of chaotic vaccine rollout – By Rachel Roubein, Brianna Ehley, and Sarah Owermohle (Politico) / January 5 2021
The patchwork of responses comes as desperate governors are facing a vacuum of federal support, along with dire funding and workforce shortages.
States scrambling to deploy millions of coronavirus vaccines are resorting to drastic measures as they wait for federal aid to help speed mass inoculations.
With about 4.8 million of the approximately 17 million doses shipped out by the federal government administered, state leaders like New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo are threatening steep fines for health providers that don’t use up all their shots this week; others are calling on retired health care workers, dentists and even veterinarians to staff vaccination sites. And many are reworking their carefully crafted distribution plans on the fly to get older Americans the shots sooner amid spiking infection rates and news that a more transmissible strain of the virus has reached the U.S.
The patchwork of responses comes as desperate governors are facing a vacuum of federal support, along with dire funding and workforce shortages that are hampering the pace of the rollout. Though Trump administration officials predict vaccination rates will pick up this week, the White House’s coronavirus task force has not convened a call with governors since Dec. 21. States have not yet seen the nearly $9 billion Congress approved to help vaccine distribution in a late December relief package.
“What we need from the federal government is for them to have started vaccine distribution planning much earlier in the year last year,” said Casey Katims, a federal liaison for Washington state.
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