The COVID-19 pandemic in the United States is still spreading, and vaccination is full of problems. The lack of communication between the federal and state governments has led to confusion and inefficient vaccine distribution.
February 15th, local time, the National Governors Association of the United States issued a joint letter from several governors to President Biden, hoping to solve the current problem of vaccine distribution chaos.
In the letter, governors raised two concerns: first, the vaccine data released by the CDC are inaccurate, and second, the federal government is implementing a number of independent vaccine distribution programs, which lacks communication with the state government.
They believe that the publicly reported data of the CDC include vaccine distribution and vaccination data in each state, and some data do not match the real situation in the state, causing “unnecessary confusion” for the people.
In addition, the federal government distributes vaccines directly to state pharmacies and health centers, and the state governments are not aware of the situation, resulting in repeated acceptance of vaccines from the federal and state governments in some places with the same pharmacy.
CNN quoted a person familiar with the matter as saying that governors want the federal government to inform the public that vaccination restrictions are due to shortages of vaccine supply, not the inaction of government officials, and hope to communicate more effectively with the federal government on vaccine distribution to understand the whereabouts of vaccines.
In some places, vaccination sites have to be temporarily closed due to insufficient vaccine supply.
CNN reported that the previous measures taken by the Trump administration were mainly to ship vaccines directly to states, which were distributed by them themselves, while after Biden came to power, the federal government distributed vaccines directly to pharmacies, which to some extent further complicated the issue of vaccine distribution.