Although the U.S. government approved two coronavirus vaccines by 2021, their distribution and vaccination progressed slowly and chaos everywhere.
Recently, there was another “scandal” of vaccination in Hamilton County, Tennessee. County officials first released the news that they were provided with vaccines for people over 75 years old, and then persuaded people in line for hours to quit because the vaccine was “not enough”.
However, the reporter found that some “relative households” “received the notice from medical friends” and “go to the black” to get the vaccine that night.
On December 31 last year, Hamilton County Health expanded the group that had access to Pfizer vaccine to all people over 75 years old and without appointments, according to NBC’s Tennessee Branch (WRCB) on January 1.
On December 31, 2020, at 9 a.m., vaccination began, and there was already a pile of vehicles on the Arminicola highway.
At 9:18 a.m., the official Twitter of the county health department issued a notice, saying, “If you are waiting in line for the coronavirus vaccine and have exceeded intersection 153 of Amnikla Road, please leave the queue and come back another day. There are still many opportunities in the near future.”
At 1 p.m., the health department also said that people who have not queued up to the vaccination site (Tena Water Park) will not be able to enter the coronavirus vaccine today.“
Later, local officials issued a media release announcing, “At that time, we estimated that the dose of the vaccine was enough for hundreds of citizens waiting in the park to be vaccinated. That group of people continued to line up in the park, and the last one began vaccination at about 4:30 p.m.
However, in the evening, the reporter of WRCB rushed to the scene and hit the vehicle coming out of the vaccination point.
The person in the car told reporters that the staff at the vaccination site and the friends who helped the vaccination told them that there was an extra dose to let them come to the vaccination.
Video from WRCB reporter posted on social media (source video picture blurred)
It is not clear whether these individuals meet the criteria for the CDC or local health department for this round of vaccination, WRCB reports.
“After the vaccination that day, we found that we actually had more doses than estimated,” said Becky Barnes, the head of Hamilton County Health Department in a written statement to the WRCB. Because these vaccines have been thawed and ready to be shot on the same day. Our original intention is not to waste a single dose of vaccine.”
Barnes later explained in a release that “Nurses thought that a bottle [vaccine] could extract five doses of vaccines, but later found that six, and sometimes seven vaccines could be prepared.” This is our first day of use of Pfizer vaccines, and the staff have not previously estimated the number of vaccines.”
The Wall Street Journal reported on January 1 that although two coronavirus vaccines (Pfizer and Monard) have been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for emergency use in the United States and have been distributed throughout the United States. However, due to the chaos of vaccine management, distribution and vaccination in the United States, the number of vaccinated people is far lower than expected.
It is worth mentioning that because Pfizer vaccine and Monard vaccine both use mRNA technology, it also poses great challenges to the distribution and storage of vaccines in the United States.
In Tennessee, Ohio, Texas and other places, there has been a serious shortage of refrigeration equipment needed for vaccine storage. In other areas, although there are enough vaccines, there are not enough syringes to complete the vaccination.
In Florida, some elderly people queued up all night in the cold wind just to get the first come, first served vaccine. There were even people over 90 years old in the queue. In addition, Texas medical staff injected 42 people with antibodies to treat COVID-19 in a hurry.
The article points out that such a slow vaccination progress is related to the lack of unified management and arrangement by the federal government. The federal government in the United States leaves the states to decide how to distribute and vaccinate vaccines, and the states let hospitals and organizations everywhere decide their own decisions, which can only cause this chaos.
As of January 4, 4.33 million doses of vaccines had been vaccinated in the United States, with a vaccination rate of only 1.3%, and seven states had vaccination rates of less than 1%, according to Bloomberg’s Vaccine Tracking.
