Vaccine Rollout in the United States
Can Pfizer and Moderna increase vaccine production rate by a factor of twenty, by April-June? Paul Ostrowski thinks they can.
Lt. General (Ret.) Paul Ostrowski, Operation Warp Speed's Head of Supply, Production, and Distribution.
If you're in the US, you'll probably get vaccinated for Covid19 before June 1, based on claims by the most reliable Federal official, Lt. General (Ret.) Paul Ostrowski, Operation Warp Speed's Head of Supply, Production, and Distribution.
However, this depends on estimates made by vaccine manufacturers for vaccine production increases being correct; if they're wrong, then at the current production rate, it would require over 3 years to vaccinate everyone in the US, not 6 months.
Getting vaccinations to everyone who wants one in the US by June, leads to very different scenarios than achieving this only by 2024.
To distinguish better between these two very different situations, let’s take a look at what the facts are, now.
Key points:
The vaccination rollout is happening in 2 basic phases. Phase 1 is for vulnerable populations (the elderly, healthcare workers, essential workers, people with disabilities), which comprise about 100M Americans (about 30% of the population). Phase 2 is the "general population" (about 70%). Phases 1a-c are explained here: https://www.cdc.gov/.../201.../vaccines/recommendations.html.
The most knowledgeable person in the US Federal government about the vaccine roll out is Lt. Gen. (Ret) Paul Ostrowski, Operation Warp Speed's Head of Supply, Production, and Distribution. He's extremely handsome and informative, so you'll want to watch his entire January 6 2021 40-minute interview with the US Chamber of commerce, in which he explains the ongoing vaccine rollout in some detail.
Or you can read a summary here.
Polls have varied, showing between 50%-60% of the US population is eager to be vaccinated as soon as it is available, and about 70% want to be vaccinated eventually. Enthusiasm for vaccination is expected to increase as second-hand experience with the vaccine increases. And as long as vaccination remains voluntary, enthusiasm plays an important role in vaccination programs.
Ostrowski explains that the US is undergoing Phase 1a vaccinations now, progressing to 1b before 1a is done, much like airline boarding in "groups" is done. Your local state and county officials will make loud, if difficult to comprehend if you’re not paying close attention, announcements over public media as to who should be queuing up, and you’re expected to manage getting into line only after your group is called. But if you want to dawdle in your seat in the boarding area, nobody is going to yank you to the line.
Ostrowski expects Phase 2 "General Population" vaccinations will begin about April 1 ("late March/early May").
By January 9, about 6.7M vaccinations have occurred. They've distributed 14M doses; the source of the difference is uncertain, but the doses are in-hand at the states, who have responsibility for putting the doses into arms. There are two suggestions based on reports: 1) there aren't enough paid personnel to do vaccinations (the US Federal government have not sent money to state and local authorities for this - which is expected to be corrected soon after Biden is inaugurated), and 2) clinics are holding back vaccinations to make sure they have a "second dose" (they shouldn't be doing that - they don't need to, according to Ostrowski, who says the second doses will be shipped at an appropriate time). Both of these are expected to be corrected around the time President-elect Joe Biden takes office. You can get “up to date” data on how many vaccinations have been distributed by the Federal government, as well as the number of people nationally who have had their initial vaccination, at the Centers for Disease Control website.
Biden stated in early December there will be "100M doses in 100 days" after he's inaugurated. That corresponds to ~50M Americans by April 1 - likely all in Phases 1a-1c, or about 50% of Phase 1a-1c persons, consistent with the described roll-out by Ostrowski.
Ostrowski expects "All Americans who want to be vaccinated can get vaccinated before June 1." Depending on how you interpret "who want to be", that could be between 50% and 70% of the US population. If it's 50%, that's 165M people, vaccinated before June 1. If you want to be vaccinated, that number will include you.
All these targets and goals lead to an important question: will manufacturers really be producing enough vaccine to make these vaccination targets?
The Big Question: Can Pfizer/Moderna Increase Vaccine Production by a Factor of Twenty?
Ostrowski says vaccine providers currently manufacture 1M-2M doses per week. This gibes with the data that 14M doses have been distributed by January 9, if they’ve been producing vaccine for the past 7 weeks, since about mid-November; indeed, the initial reporting was that the vaccine doses were being produced even before FDA approval of the vaccines as safe and effective (which was part of the “Operation Warp Speed” design, moving as quickly as possible from research to production to insure rapid availability).
To get to 50M vaccinated persons by April 1, requires an average vaccine manufacturing rate between January 1 and April 1 of 7.2M doses per week - almost 4x higher than a ~2M doses per week produced from mid-November to January 1.
But to go from 50M to 165M vaccinated between April 1 and June 1, 115M more people are going to be vaccinated, in 2 months. At 2 doses each, this is 330M doses, or 41M doses manufactured per week on average — an enormous 20x increase over 2M doses per week.
Can the manufacturers Pfizer and Moderna really increase vaccine production by an average of 4x between January and April, and reach an average production rate increase of 20x between April and June?
This is what is being represented by these vaccination claims. If the manufacturers can meet that ambitious target, then, indeed, as Ostrowski says, everyone “who wants to” in the US can get vaccinated before June 1. But if they cannot increase their manufacturing rate this way, instead producing only 2M doses per week, then instead of 165M people vaccinated by June 1, it will take 20x longer — about 40 months, or more than 3 years — to produce enough vaccine to vaccinate “everyone who wants to”. At that rate, the US wouldn’t vaccinate 165M people until 2024.
Thus, much depends on Pfizer and Moderna being able to accelerate vaccine production rates from the average value mid-November through January 1, by x4 on average between January and April, and by x20 between April and June.
To know if they’re doing this, we’ll just have to pay close attention.