Speaker 1: It's Thursday March. I'm Oscar Ramirez from the Daily Dive
Speaker 1: podcast in Los Angeles, and this is reopening America. We
Speaker 1: currently have three great vaccine options out there, but the
Speaker 1: rollout for one seems to be a little bit bumpier
Speaker 1: than the others. The Johnson and Johnson vaccine is just
Speaker 1: not reaching as many arms as the others are. Only
Speaker 1: about half of the doses that have been distributed have
Speaker 1: been administered. Some officials believe that states may be holding
Speaker 1: back some shots to bank enough to reach underserved communities,
Speaker 1: but some states representatives say they are using all available
Speaker 1: doses as they come. Aaron Banko, healthcare reporter at Politico,
Speaker 1: joins us for why the Johnson and Johnson vaccine might
Speaker 1: not be reaching more people. Thanks for joining us, Aaron,
Speaker 1: Thanks for having me. I wanted to talk about Johnson
Speaker 1: and Johnson. The vaccine right now isn't having the best rollout.
Speaker 1: We've sent out millions of doses, but we're still seeing
Speaker 1: large amounts of them not being administered. There's a few reasons,
Speaker 1: uh that the government thing why they might not be
Speaker 1: going out something Maybe states are saving some of them
Speaker 1: up to help reach different populations, but the rollout, like
Speaker 1: I said, has just not been going according to plan
Speaker 1: just yet. Aaron, what do we know about why Johnson
Speaker 1: and Johnson hasn't been more widely distributed yet? So I
Speaker 1: think it's a really important question to be asking, particularly
Speaker 1: because Johnson and Johnson is coming up here at the
Speaker 1: end of the month is supposed to be delivering sixteen
Speaker 1: million more doses of its vaccine to the federal government
Speaker 1: for distribution. So what we wanted to do a politico
Speaker 1: is look at how the rollout has been going so
Speaker 1: far in the past couple of weeks, and what we've
Speaker 1: seen is that the rollout has been quite bumpy. Now,
Speaker 1: the administration had warned at the beginning of the J
Speaker 1: and J announcement that the rollout might not be as
Speaker 1: smooth as states had hoped, particularly because the number of
Speaker 1: doses that are coming off the manufacturing lines. The J
Speaker 1: and J manufacturing lines are sporadic, so the federal government
Speaker 1: doesn't always have a clear understanding of how many doses
Speaker 1: are available for distribution to states of week. Now, some
Speaker 1: senior administration officials say that they think some states are
Speaker 1: holding onto those stockpiles of jan J doses until they
Speaker 1: get another tranche of doses at the end of the
Speaker 1: month to sort of have a more equal flow of
Speaker 1: the dozing in the next couple of weeks. Other states
Speaker 1: we talked to said they're not doing that. They are
Speaker 1: pushing out all of the J and J doses that
Speaker 1: they're getting. So it's a bit confusing right now. It's
Speaker 1: not exactly clear what is going on, beyond the fact
Speaker 1: that the vaccination rate around the J and J vaccine
Speaker 1: is still quite low and this one should be a
Speaker 1: lot easier to administer. We've heard about it it being
Speaker 1: that one and done shot. It's only the one shot
Speaker 1: protocol versus Fiser and madernas. You've got to get two
Speaker 1: shots separated by what is it, two or three weeks apart.
Speaker 1: I think the numbers that we have is that about
Speaker 1: two point three million of the four point three million
Speaker 1: doses that have been delivered have been actually administered so far.
Speaker 1: That's what we're looking at right now. But one of
Speaker 1: the things you kind of mentioned it is the reporting
Speaker 1: is tough to keep track of all the states do
Speaker 1: it differently. And then beyond that, states are allocated shots,
Speaker 1: but then individual pharmacies can be allocated different things, so
Speaker 1: it's hard to keep track of it all too. The
Speaker 1: thing we know about the way that the federal government
Speaker 1: tracks well, really all of its COVID nine team data,
Speaker 1: but particularly the vaccine, is that there's quite a bit
Speaker 1: of a reporting lag from jurisdictions up to the state
Speaker 1: level and then from the state level to the federal
Speaker 1: government about how many doses have been administered. But some
Speaker 1: of the senior officials we talked to said they didn't
Speaker 1: think the reporting lag for the j M J vaccine
Speaker 1: on the CDC's vaccine track or web page was that delayed.
Speaker 1: So what we're finding is that the administration is also
Speaker 1: sort of struggling to understand what's going on across the country.
Speaker 1: What we do know is that the j M J
Speaker 1: vaccine has been administered quite efficiently through the federal retail
Speaker 1: pharmacy program, so your local CBS that you can walk
Speaker 1: down the street and grab a j M J vaccine.
Speaker 1: That's been going really well. And so a lot of
Speaker 1: the pharmacies that we've spoken to who existed in that
Speaker 1: program say they're completely out of the j J vaccine
Speaker 1: and they don't know when they're getting more. You know,
Speaker 1: one of the things I was always curious about two
Speaker 1: is when the Johnson and Johnson vaccine came on board,
Speaker 1: the efficacy rate was not as high as Maderna or Fightser,
Speaker 1: So I was curious if there would be some hesitancy
Speaker 1: of people maybe refusing it, waiting out for some of
Speaker 1: the other ones. You know, you mentioned how states are
Speaker 1: approaching this. West Virginia was initially using that J and
Speaker 1: J vaccine to inoculate homeless people in Homebown because you
Speaker 1: didn't have to wait for those follow ups. But do
Speaker 1: we know anything about that, you know, maybe people's perception
Speaker 1: of the J and J vaccine. All we know is
Speaker 1: what we're hearing anecdotally. So I think at the very
Speaker 1: beginning of the J and J rollout, there was a
Speaker 1: fear among senior administration officials that Americans would be hesitant
Speaker 1: to sign up for the J and J vaccine because
Speaker 1: of the raw data that existed about its efficacy. But
Speaker 1: what they found and have been finding over time, is
Speaker 1: that people really like the Jane J vaccine because it's
Speaker 1: a one and done situation. You know, there is some
Speaker 1: concern that portions of the country are not signing up
Speaker 1: for the shot because of that efficacy rate. But that's
Speaker 1: not proven by any stretch of the imagination. I think
Speaker 1: for the most part, people who we've spoken to on
Speaker 1: the ground seem to have really enjoyed the J and
Speaker 1: J process and like that they're sort of immune in
Speaker 1: a one shot dose definitely, And you know, for those
Speaker 1: that are are not as high risk as others, you know,
Speaker 1: let's say you're young and healthy, Johnson and Johnson vaccine
Speaker 1: is probably maybe the best choice one and done. You're
Speaker 1: still going to get protection. You're younger and healthy, so
Speaker 1: you won't be getting COVID in the most severe forms anyway,
Speaker 1: So that might be the best option, whereas more high
Speaker 1: risk people, you know, might want to make that extra
Speaker 1: effort to get fiser or maderna. So what can we
Speaker 1: expect You mentioned where that states are going to get
Speaker 1: another big push, another big delivery of more J and
Speaker 1: J vaccines. What are we going to be expecting when
Speaker 1: we see that. So that's actually, according to some of
Speaker 1: the new reporting we got today, is a little bit
Speaker 1: up in the air. We do know that states should
Speaker 1: be alerted by the federal government tomorrow or the next
Speaker 1: day about a new set of doses which will be
Speaker 1: released to states to order against next week. We just
Speaker 1: don't know how big of a pot that is. We
Speaker 1: don't know how many doses are going to be included
Speaker 1: in that ranche. So again, like I mentioned earlier, we're
Speaker 1: really waiting on the pharmaceutical company to deliver that promise
Speaker 1: sixteen million doses by the end of the month for
Speaker 1: distribution hopefully at the beginning of April. And then of
Speaker 1: course they have other targets to meet later down the line,
Speaker 1: a hundred million by June, hopefully by the end of May.
Speaker 1: So States can expect to receive some additional J and
Speaker 1: J doses of the next couple of weeks, but I
Speaker 1: don't think they are going to be getting that many. Well,
Speaker 1: hopefully we can increase the rollout of this and just
Speaker 1: get as many shots into arms as possible. Aaron Bankoh,
Speaker 1: healthcare reporter at Politico, thank you very much for joining us.
Speaker 1: Thanks for having me. I'm Screw Ramirez and this has
Speaker 1: been reopening America. Don't forget effort today's big news stories.
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