‘Some Healthcare Providers Regularly Holding Back Doses’: Top Biden COVID Adviser

A top COVID-19 adviser for President Joe Biden on Monday urged healthcare providers not to hoard vaccine doses for second shots that could be administered for initial shots.

White House COVID-19 senior adviser Andy Slavitt said some providers are holding back doses to make sure they have enough supply. Both the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines require two shots.

“We believe that some health care providers are regularly holding back doses that are intended as first doses, and instead keeping them in reserve for second doses for patients. We want to be clear that we understand why health care providers have done that, but that it does not need to happen, and should not happen,” Slavitt said at a virtual press briefing.

“On January 20, states had administered 46% of their inventory. Today, that number is 62%. We are focused on this every hour of every day,” he said.

Slavitt said the Biden administration last week moved to create a three-week window into vaccine shipping plans so providers would know they’ll have enough supply for second doses.

“With this action, states and vaccine providers will more rapidly use their first doses to vaccinate as many people as quickly and as equitably as possible, because they now have the predictability, that the second dose will be there when the time comes,” he said.

Slavitt’s comments come after a report that the Biden administration has yet to locate 20 million vaccine doses that were distributed to the states last month.

A Politico report on Saturday said: “Biden’s team is still trying to locate upwards of 20 million vaccine doses that have been sent to states — a mystery that has hampered plans to speed up the national vaccination effort.”

“’It’s the Mike Tyson quote: ‘Everybody’s got a plan until they get punched in the mouth,’ said one person with knowledge of the vaccine effort who’s not authorized to discuss the work. ‘They are planning. They are competent. It’s just the weight of everything when you sit down in that chair. It’s heavy,’” the outlet reported.

Millions of doses of two vaccines have been distributed, but Politico said once the vaccine shipments are delivered to the states, “responsibility for tracking them has been left up to states’ individual public health systems. The administration then only gets an update once the doses are actually administered and an official record is submitted.”

“‘I think they were really caught off guard by that,’ said one adviser. ‘It’s a mess.’”

On December 8, then-President-elect Biden vowed to deliver 100 million vaccines in his first 100 days in office. “I’m absolutely convinced that in 100 days, we can change the course of the disease and change life in America for the better,” Biden said in remarks from Wilmington, Delaware.

But before Biden even took office, the Trump administration had already hit that number.

In one of his first acts in office, Biden signed a slew of executive orders. After one signing ceremony, an Associated Press reporter, Zeke Miller, asked Biden if his target should be set higher than 1 million a day, noting “that’s basically where the U.S. is right now.”

“When I announced it, you all said it’s not possible,” Biden said gruffly, blasting the media. “C’mon, give me a break, man.”

Related: ‘It’s A Mess’: Team Biden Loses Track Of 20 Million COVID-19 Doses: Report

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