‘They have reneged.’ False promise of extra COVID vaccines leaves California scrambling

California officials, already scrambling to accelerate the distribution of COVID-19 vaccines, were frustrated by revelations Friday that the Trump administration doesn’t have a reserve stockpile of vaccines that it had been promising to release.

The disclosure came two days after the California Department of Public Health, anticipating an increase in supplies from the federal government, told counties to begin vaccinating seniors 65 and older.

“It’s simple — states need more vaccines and clarity of when we will be receiving them,” Gov. Gavin Newsom tweeted. He said the federal government “has achieved the opposite.” Later, his office tweeted: “Dose supply is the #1 constraint to getting more Californians vaccinated. Californians need more clarity from the federal government.”

His frustration was on display Friday afternoon in Los Angeles, where Newsom met with Mayor Eric Garcetti at the mass vaccination site that’s been set up at Dodger Stadium.

Newsom said he and other governors were promised two days earlier by Vice President Mike Pence and Alex Azar, the U.S. Health and Human Services secretary, that the federal government was going to release additional supplies that had been held back.

“And then we read as everyone else, that they have reneged on that or for whatever reason have been unable to deliver,” Newsom said, standing on the infield of the famed ballpark.

He said the state has been expecting hundreds of thousands of new supplies but, in light of Friday’s revelations, “we are now mindful of the importance to verify that information.”

“We’ve got to increase the pace and distribution of these vaccines,” Newsom added. “When we know when doses are arriving, it helps us with our planning purposes, it allows quicker and more efficient throughput.”

Garcetti added, “The central issue is we simply aren’t receiving enough vaccines at the national level.” The mayor said he has talked to President-elect Joe Biden, who assured him that his incoming administration would work to speed up distribution of vaccines to states.

He and Newsom said they’re looking forward to the change in administration next week.

On Tuesday, the federal HHS secretary, Azar, announced that the government was releasing a trove of vaccines that it had been holding back for second doses, with instructions to the states to move beyond healthcare workers and nursing-home residents and start giving shots to the general population of seniors.

“We are releasing the entire supply we have for order by states, rather than holding second doses in physical reserve,” Azar said.

On Friday, however, the Washington Post and New York Times reported that the federal stockpile of additional vaccines is nonexistent.

Newsom and other officials have stressed that an efficient vaccination campaign depends on states having accurate information about how many doses they can expect to receive and when. The vaccines must be stored at very cold temperatures and need to be used soon after they are thawed, making careful planning essential so doses aren’t wasted.

The conflicting information means California officials can’t trust the numbers they get from the federal government, said state Sen. Richard Pan, D-Sacramento. That forces providers to wait until they have the doses in hand to start the time-consuming process of planning vaccination events.

To ensure no doses are wasted, providers must thaw the right number of vials, have the right number of health care workers to administer vaccines, and gather the right number of people in the right place to be vaccinated, all within a narrow window of time before the doses expire.

“Imagine that you’re a wedding planner, and you don’t know whether the bride and groom are going to show up, except over and over again, on a larger scale,” said Pan, a doctor who chairs the Senate Health Committee. “How do you set expectations when you don’t even know what you’re going to get?”

The absence of surplus supplies represents another headache for Newsom, who’s already been criticized for the slow rollout of the vaccines in California. The state has vaccinated just 2,716 out of every 100,000 residents, well below the national average, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

However, Newsom said the state has vaccinated a total of 1.9 million people — far more than the 1.1 million figure cited in the CDC’s database.

‘It’s a real problem. We set up an expectation’

Based on the assurances from Azar, California officials had directed counties to widen the pool of recipients by taking half of the vaccines they’d been stockpiling for second doses and use them for first doses instead.

Healthcare providers have been leery about exhausting their supplies because second doses must be administered within three or four weeks, depending on which type of vaccine is employed.

“It’s a real problem. We set up an expectation,” said Anthony Wright of Health Access California, an advocacy group. “The federal government basically prodded states to really open up vaccine distribution to a general population, seniors ... in anticipation of this extra shipment from a federal reserve that apparently doesn’t exist.”

Distributing the vaccines “was always going to be a tough thing even if we did this perfectly. This doesn’t help. The federal government’s ... start-and-stop doesn’t help.” He said the snafu will lead to more delays in rolling out vaccines.

“A person who’s trying to set up an appointment may be booked out for a couple more weeks,” Wright said. “I hope that we’re not in a position where people are showing up and they’re turned away.”

Newsom says 1.188 million doses have been administered in California. He says the state is on pace to exceed its goal to administer 1 million vaccines in 10 days. That deadline will be up at the end of the weekend. Newsom also noted that the vaccine numbers available publicly are a few days old.

Newsom pointed to the Dodgers Stadium site, as well as the site at Cal Expo, are part of the state’s strategy to increase the speed of vaccinations. Eventually, the Dodgers Stadium site aims to vaccinate 12,000 people per day, said Los Angeles City Council President Nury Martinez.

It wasn’t immediately clear what would happen to supplies earmarked for the Sacramento area.

“We are operating week to week because the distributions are not set and will not be able to accommodate all requests until we have consistent supply. We are focusing on ... frontline workers, and long-term care facilities, as well as adding those who are 65 years old and older when possible,” said Brenda Bongiorno, spokeswoman for the Sacramento County Public Health Department.

Jake Scott, a Stanford University infectious disease specialist, said, “It’s a communications failure, it’s a logistical failure. It’s incredibly frustrating to be on the front lines and hear about these failures when we have the medical technology.

“It shouldn’t be this hard.”

As news spread, elected officials in other states blasted the federal administration.

Gov. Jay Inslee of Washington said the Trump administration “must answer immediately for this deception.” Gov. Kate Brown of Oregon called it “a deception on a national scale. Oregon’s seniors, teachers, all of us, were depending on the promise of Oregon’s share of the federal reserve of vaccines being released to us.”

This story was originally published January 15, 2021 at 1:19 PM with the headline "‘They have reneged.’ False promise of extra COVID vaccines leaves California scrambling."