Bloomberg News:
The U.S. vaccine supply is about to get a whole lot bigger.
Currently, the U.S. is administering 1.6 million doses a day, constrained by the current supply of about 10 million to 15 million doses a week. But manufacturers and U.S. officials have accelerated their production timelines and signaled that the spigots are about to open. That will provide hundreds of millions of doses to match the growing capacity to immunize people at pharmacies and mass-vaccination sites.
“What we are going to see is every week a continued ramp,” says Andy Slavitt, White House senior adviser for Covid response. By the end of March, he says, there should be 200 million doses available for distribution to states — about 90 million more than the current total, according to U.S. figures.
A review of drugmakers’ public statements and their supply deals suggests that the number of vaccines delivered should rise to almost 20 million a week in March, more than 25 million a week in April and May, and over 30 million a week June. By summer, it would be enough to give 4.5 million shots a day.
Pfizer and Moderna have promised to deliver more than 500 million additional doses by the end of July, and Johnson & Johnson is expected to deliver 100 million doses of its one-shot vaccine by the end of June. Taken together, that’s enough to vaccinate 400 million people — more than is needed to cover all of the U.S. — before the end of July.
Of course, drugmakers have missed some previous projections following scientific setbacks and manufacturing failures. To mitigate those risks, the U.S. reached agreements to buy at least 1.21 billion doses, far more than what’s needed to cover all Americans.
And even if the promised doses are delivered, the U.S. would still face a daunting logistical challenge of administering them. Perhaps for that reason, President Joe Biden’s administration has remained conservative in its own projections.
But states and cities have made clear they're prepared to handle more doses. Michigan’s top health official said early this month that the state could perform 80,000 vaccinations a day — at least 30,000 more than its recent daily average. In California, officials are opening sites like the San Francisco 49ers football stadium, where they will be able to perform 15,000 doses a day.
New York Mayor Bill de Blasio said the city had delayed opening several mass-vaccination sites while waiting for doses.
“We have the infrastructure in place to deliver half a million doses per week. All that’s missing is the supply to get it done,” de Blasio said.
Based on these latest projections, that's about to change.--Drew Armstrong and Tom Randall
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