MERIDEN, Conn. — The Biden administration will order 200-million more doses of the COVID vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna. It's in an effort to reach their goal of 100-million doses in 100 days. But those doses won’t just magically appear.
At Protein Sciences in Meriden, they’ve been developing two of their own COVID vaccines, but last month, they hit a snag. The concentration of their formula wasn't strong enough to produce an adequate immune response in older adults. So now, they are shifting focus to help Pfizer manufacture their vaccine while also continuing their own research.
Protein Sciences is owned by Sanofi, a French biopharmaceutical company. Sanofi plans to utilize its advanced manufacturing capabilities in Germany to produce 125-million doses of Pfizer's COVID vaccine for use in the European population. This will allow Pfizer to divert more of its existing manufacturing capacity here to the United States.
This all comes on the heels of President Biden announcing a ramp-up in doses. "We will both increase the supply in the short term by more than 15% and give our states and local partners more certainly about when the deliveries will arrive," said President Biden.
Starting next week, the vaccine supply will be boosted nationally from 8.4 to 10-million doses weekly. That's an additional 1.4 million COVID vaccine doses that will be dispersed among the states and territories. Reggie Eadie, the Co-Chair of Connecticut's Vaccine Advisory Board said, "The only reason why you don’t see more of the massive vaccination centers in Connecticut is because we just don’t have the vaccine."
The allocation is based on population. Connecticut has been getting a weekly allocation of 46,000 doses. "Our weekly allocation of first doses is going to increase from 46,000 to just under 54,000," said Connecticut Chief Operating Officer Josh Geballe. "We had our vaccination partners in the state this week request 150,000 first doses and we only got 46,000. With additional supply and a small amount of lead time we can do even more than 150,000 so we can really ramp this up fast."
Boosting the supply of first doses is not expected to impact the supply of second doses. Geballe told FOX61 second doses are a separate allocation equal to the amount of first doses received in any given week.
The state has also been working to reclaim some vaccines from retail pharmacies. The pharmacies are starting to wrap up their vaccinations of nursing homes and assisted living facilities. The state had to give them a certain number of doses based on a formula set by the past administration and Operation Warp Speed, but now the state can reclaim some of them.
In addition to an increase in supply, the administration will also give states a three-week forecast of the number of doses they’ll receive to help them plan where and how they’ll be allocated at the local level. "Until now, we’ve had to guess how much vaccine to expect," said President Biden. Reggie Eadie added, "Three weeks later after someone receives a first dose, they are going to be showing back up expecting a second and we have to schedule them accordingly, so this is all great news."
The question remains, is Connecticut ready to get more shots into people's arms? The state says absolutely. Right now, Connecticut ranks 3rd in the nation behind only Alaska and West Virginia in terms of the percentage of the population who has received their first dose. "Currently, over 8% of the overall population has gotten their first dose in Connecticut but with our particular focus on the 75+ in phase 1B, we are around 30%," explained Geballe.
But make no mistake, things can go wrong. Like a break down in the vaccine supply chain. That’s why the Biden administration is also invoking the defense production act to ramp up the supply of syringes, dry ice, and vials along with testing kits and masks. President Trump did this for ventilators.
The state also wants you to know they hear your concerns about ease of access to booking a vaccine appointment. The VAMS online portal has been difficult for the elderly to navigate alone and people have been having trouble getting through to the call center. "We know that the VAMS system has been challenging for some folks. That’s why we set up the call center and it’s gotten a tremendous amount of volume and we are doubling the staff there. Also, it’s why we’ve worked with providers such as the larger hospital systems and local health departments to enable them to do their own outreach as well," said Geballe.