By TERRY LYNAM //
Frustration abounds as Long Islanders and Americans nationwide struggle to make appointments for a COVID-19 vaccination.
The initial strategy put in place by Operation Warp Speed – the public-private partnership established by the federal government to develop, manufacture and distribute the vaccines – purposely held back 50 percent of the nation’s available supply to guarantee second doses to the healthcare workers, nursing home denizens and others eligible during the rollout’s first phase.
With COVID cases, hospitalizations and deaths on the rise nationwide, the federal government on Jan. 12 agreed to release most of the remaining supply and expand eligibility in order to get more people vaccinated sooner. The “remaining supply” part has proved problematic, but eligibility has certainly expanded.
Among those now entitled to inoculation are more than 49 million Americans ages 65 and older, first responders (including police and firefighters), corrections officers, teachers and other educators and lots of public-facing people: airline, airport, bus, ferry, passenger railroad, subway and other mass-transit workers, grocery store clerks. People living and working in homeless shelters, too.
Not surprisingly, opening these floodgates has created an overwhelming demand for the vaccine that just can’t be accommodated.
Simple math tells the story: The U.S. population is 328 million. The federal government’s expanded guidelines have made more than 150 million Americans eligible for the vaccine. As of Jan. 14, the federal government had distributed about 30.6 million doses (combined) of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, and about 11.1 million people had been inoculated.
In New York State, more than 7 million people – about 36 percent of 19.4 million New Yorkers – are now eligible. Unfortunately, the state is only receiving about 300,000 doses a week from the federal government; at that rate, it would take nearly six months to vaccinate everyone currently eligible, never mind the remaining 12 million New York residents who are now on the outside looking in.
Terry Lynam: Do the math.
Presumably, the federal government, Pfizer and Moderna will ramp up production and distribution in the months ahead. There’s also the promise of a third vaccine being developed by Johnson & Johnson, which can be administered in a single dose. The company is scheduled to report results from its clinical trial in a couple weeks.
In the meantime, for those searching appointment websites and making phone calls, landing an appointment for the vaccine may feel like winning the lottery.
On Long Island, Northwell Health was assigned by the state Department of Health to coordinate vaccine distribution, working in collaboration with Nassau and Suffolk counties. As of Jan. 15, more than 72,000 vaccinations had been administered at nine community vaccination hubs in the two counties and other locations.
Uncertainty about supply has made it difficult to plan. When shipments do arrive, appointments are made available online at the various sites for the following day, but typically book up in about 10 minutes or less. Northwell’s vaccine call center (1-844-919-8222) has been getting up to 50,000 inquiries a day, on top of calls coming into the Nassau and Suffolk departments of health.
Creating an even-greater sense of urgency, COVID-19 hospitalizations on Long Island continue to climb. Inpatient admissions for the virus are higher in Nassau and Suffolk counties than anywhere else in the New York metropolitan area except Queens, which was the epicenter of the pandemic in the spring.
The good news is that the increases in hospitalizations we’ve seen since after Thanksgiving have been gradual, not the dramatic spikes experienced in March and April, when daily hospitalizations were more than double what they are now. The mortality rate is also much lower, indicating that treatment therapies have become more effective.
The challenge for Long Island healthcare workers, of course, is trying to vaccinate the public while caring for several thousand new coronavirus patients testing positive every day. Another challenge is making sure the vaccine reaches communities of color, which have been disproportionately impacted by the virus.
For that reason, at Gov. Cuomo’s request, Northwell established the Long Island Health Equity Task Force, which is working with leaders in communities with a history of health disparities and a high prevalence of chronic diseases – factors that make people more vulnerable to COVID-19. The goal is to get guidance on how best to inform and educate people in those communities about the importance and availability of COVID-19 vaccinations.
Certainly, the rollout of this unprecedented vaccination campaign has been slow. There have been missteps and a whole lot of confusion. You can expect more moving forward.
But these vaccines – developed in record time – are a gamechanger that will enable us to escape the darkness of this pandemic. We all need to be patient, wait our turn and do what we can to help heal our communities and get the economy moving again, so those who lost jobs because of the shutdown can return to work and those whose businesses were shuttered can reopen.
In the meantime, we all need to continue to do our part to slow the spread – wear a mask, wash your hands regularly and maintain six-foot social distance from others.
Terry Lynam is a communications consultant and former senior vice president/chief public relations officer for Northwell Health.
