Local funding crisis threatens vaccine rollout

[NFA] In counties across the United States, a funding crisis has limited the hiring of needed vaccine staff, delayed the creation of vaccination centers, and undermined efforts to raise public awareness.

Lisa Bernhard produced this report.

Having successfully expedited the development and approval of two COVID-19 vaccines, the Trump administration said its target was to inoculate 20 million people by the end of December.

But by the last day of the month, the government had fallen far short of its goal – as only about 2.6 million Americans had been vaccinated.

MONCEF SLAOUI, CHIEF SCIENTIFIC ADVISER, OPERATION WARP SPEED: “We agree that that number is lower than what we hoped for.” The wide gap acknowledged a day earlier by Moncef Slaoui, Chief Scientific Adviser of Operation Warp Speed - and by President-elect Joe Biden this week, who said that if the pace continues as is... PRESIDENT-ELECT JOE BIDEN: “…it's going to take years, not months, to vaccinate the American people." President Donald Trump this week pointed his finger at the states, ordering them to (quote) “get moving”… but the states are pointing their collective finger right back at the federal government – blaming a funding crisis that has limited the hiring of needed vaccine staff, delayed the creation of vaccination centers, and undermined efforts to raise public awareness.

Although the federal government has spent more than $10 billion to speed vaccine development, it has so far disbursed little funding for distribution.

A new $2.3 trillion pandemic aid and spending package provides more than $8 billion to states to assist in vaccinations, in line with what state and local officials had requested, but months after distribution work should have begun.

Federal officials on Wednesday also noted that only about 14 million doses of Pfizer’s and Moderna’s vaccines have been distributed to states so far, shy of its goal of 20 million.

And most the doses that are out there sit unused, with health care clinics and vaccination sites stretched too thin.

The logistics chief for Illinois’s Champaign-Urbana Public Health District told Reuters that her district was tapping a rainy day fund until more federal assistance arrives, adding (quote), “We’re four weeks into significant planning and two weeks into active distribution and we don’t have a secure funding stream.”