May 10 2021 Recently, there have been bottlenecks in vaccinations in many places in the United States. On the one hand, several states are still asking the federal government to reserve an “alarming number” of coronavirus vaccines, but on the other hand, the U.S. public’s willingness to vaccinate has plummeted, leading to a build-up of U.S. vaccine stocks, the Associated Press reported Wednesday. While some countries are still waiting for vaccines, the huge inequalities of coronavirus pandemic have been highlighted.
From South Carolina to Washington state, several states have asked the Biden administration to provide only a fraction of its vaccine quota. In the week to 8 May alone, the number of vaccines rejected was staggering. The Associated Press points to this as a clear example of the “vaccine hesitancy” problem in the United States.
According to reports, the U.S. federal government is based on the size of the population of each state to distribute vaccines, and then the states decide how many vaccines to book each week. In the early days, several states would have required the delivery of a full quota of vaccines, and on that basis, they had asked for an increase in vaccine quotas, but now they have scaled back.
For now, U.S. officials at all levels are doing everything they can to persuade people to get vaccinated. The federal government has allocated $250 million to community organizations to promote vaccinations, appointments and transportation services, U.S. Health Secretary Vivic Mossy said Wednesday. After several states refused to accept full vaccine quotas, the Biden administration announced that it would move excess vaccines elsewhere to meet the needs of other states.
The article also noted that Biden’s previous announcement that AstraZeneca would ship AstraZeneca vaccines abroad once it passed a safety review in the U.S. was “another sign of a surge in the U.S. stock surplus,” the Associated Press said.
The Associated Press says the huge supply of vaccines and declining demand for vaccinations in the U.S. highlight the huge inequality of the coronavirus pandemic, which is hitting India hard and some countries are still waiting for the new vaccine, while rich countries like the U.S. are flooded with vaccines.
Rich countries such as the United States, Britain and European Union countries have struck deals with companies including Pfizer, Modner and AstraZeneca to provide billions of dollars to speed up vaccine development in exchange for priority use of the vaccine, according to media reports.
In May 2020, the U.S. government ordered 300 million doses of the vaccine from AstraZeneca for $1.2 billion, but the vaccine has not yet been approved in the U.S., the report said. By January 2021, Wells Fargo had pre-purchased 96 percent of Pfizer’s planned production for the year and 100 percent of Modner’s planned production.
