Speaker 1: Welcome to Prognosis. I'm Laura Carlson. It's day two hundred
Speaker 1: and seventy five since coronavirus was declared a global pandemic.
Speaker 1: Today's main story. How do you roll out a vaccine
Speaker 1: state by state to hundreds of millions of people in
Speaker 1: the middle of a pandemic. You start with the flu shot.
Speaker 1: But first, Here's what happened in Virus News today. The
Speaker 1: first COVID nineteen vaccine shots were administered by US hospitals
Speaker 1: on Monday. It's the initial step in a historic drive
Speaker 1: to immunize millions of people as deaths in the US
Speaker 1: approach the three hundred thousand mark. The first shot went
Speaker 1: to critical care nurse Sandra Lindsay in New York, the
Speaker 1: city that was once the epicenter of the pandemic. Hospitals
Speaker 1: around the country went into overdrive this weekend preparing to
Speaker 1: receive and administer the first doses of the vaccine. Shipments
Speaker 1: started leaving Fiser's Michigan plant early on Sunday morning, less
Speaker 1: than two days after the Food and Drug Administration authorized
Speaker 1: the vaccine for emergency use. They are scheduled to arrive
Speaker 1: at hundreds of sites between today and Wednesday, Italy overtook
Speaker 1: the UK as the European country with the highest number
Speaker 1: of COVID nineteen deaths. The death toll puts pressure on
Speaker 1: Prime Minister Giuseppe Conti's government as it seeks to prevent
Speaker 1: a flare up of the contagion during the holiday season. Finally,
Speaker 1: Fightser and bio Antech may soon allow participants in its
Speaker 1: vaccine trial to learn whether they received a placebo rather
Speaker 1: than the real thing, and get the actual shot if
Speaker 1: they wish. In an emailed statement, Fizer said the option
Speaker 1: would be voluntary and now for today's main story. As
Speaker 1: the first shots of the COVID nineteen vaccines in the
Speaker 1: US are administered, one of many big hurdles has yet
Speaker 1: to be cleared. States must transport and distribute the massive
Speaker 1: orders to the millions who need it. The state of
Speaker 1: Louisiana has been thinking about this problem for months. In November,
Speaker 1: they decided to test their vaccination strategy using the flu
Speaker 1: vaccine for the first time. The state hosted drive through
Speaker 1: clinics across all of its nine public health regions. These
Speaker 1: were official exercises to practice vaccinating the state's nearly five
Speaker 1: million residents in the era of Social Distancing Angelica Levito,
Speaker 1: went to Shreveport, Louisiana, as the project was unfolding to
Speaker 1: find out what a mass vaccination looks like during a pandemic.
Speaker 1: I'm standing in the parking lot at the Louisiana State Fairgrounds.
Speaker 1: Often the distance towards the outskirts of the grounds you
Speaker 1: can see signs for pizza and corn dogs. It's about
Speaker 1: eight o'clock in the morning, and local health workers have
Speaker 1: already been here for hours setting up a drive through
Speaker 1: flu shot clinic. To my left, we have the Health
Speaker 1: Department workers who are getting organized. They were moving boxes
Speaker 1: earlier filled with gloves, and then there's thermometers that they're
Speaker 1: going to be handing out to people in line. Over here,
Speaker 1: the National Guard setting up tents. They're in uniform. Everybody's
Speaker 1: wearing a mask. The Health Department is hosting similar scenes
Speaker 1: across the state this fall. These are to practice how
Speaker 1: the state might administer COVID nineteen vaccines when they become available.
Speaker 1: It's the first time the city of Shreveport has offered
Speaker 1: drive through vaccinations. It's also the largest vaccine event the
Speaker 1: area has ever hosted. Nurses are ready to give up
Speaker 1: to one thousand five shots. Dr Martha White overseas the operation.
Speaker 1: She leads the regional Health office. Today, she whizzes around
Speaker 1: the parking lot, checking in with her nurses, the National Guard,
Speaker 1: and the police officers patrolling the area. It's nine oh one.
Speaker 1: We have our first few cars coming through. The nurses
Speaker 1: are preparing the shot. They're working together taking out the vial.
Speaker 1: Because these are not individual doses, they have to actually
Speaker 1: take out with a syringe of free set amount. And
Speaker 1: here we go. Here comes another nurse and she is
Speaker 1: sticking the man's arm with a shot and rolls down
Speaker 1: his sleeve. He puts the car in gear and now
Speaker 1: he's on his way. This scene almost makes the operation
Speaker 1: look easy, but it's only a preview of a far
Speaker 1: more complex effort ahead. The United States will soon start
Speaker 1: its largest mass vaccination campaign in modern history. The goal
Speaker 1: is to immunize as many Americans as possible against COVID nineteen.
Speaker 1: The challenges are almost endless. The vaccines themselves are delicate.
Speaker 1: They have to be up at specific temperatures in order
Speaker 1: to be effective. Then doctors and pharmacists will need to
Speaker 1: make sure people come back for their second shot, and
Speaker 1: they will need to vaccinate millions of people. In the
Speaker 1: era of social distancing, vaccines could help end a pandemic
Speaker 1: that has killed about three hundred thousand Americans and ravaged
Speaker 1: the economy. Both effects can be felt here in Louisiana.
Speaker 1: The state has a high number of infections and deaths.
Speaker 1: As a percent of its population, About two hundred seventy
Speaker 1: thousand people have fallen ill about seven thousand have died.
Speaker 1: Downtown Shreveport is empty these days. Government employees are working
Speaker 1: from home. Signs outside coffee shops ask patrons to wear masks.
Speaker 1: Some slot machines at the casinos along the riverfront are
Speaker 1: turned off to allow for social distancing. Shreveport Mayor Adrian
Speaker 1: Perkins says the city's economy has been devastated. One large
Speaker 1: casino in the area is already out of business, and
Speaker 1: our casino is here locally have been hit very, very
Speaker 1: hard as well with the revenue short tenses. When they
Speaker 1: close the casinos and now when they opened them, they
Speaker 1: still can only have so much capacity, so their revenue
Speaker 1: is down and that impacts the city's budget because the
Speaker 1: city get revenue directly from the casinos and NINA Prose fund,
Speaker 1: so the city budget has been hit quite hard as well.
Speaker 1: Controlling the virus offers the only way forward for Shreeve
Speaker 1: Sport and communities across the country, but not everybody wants
Speaker 1: to comply with measures to stop the spread. Some people
Speaker 1: do not believe the virus is real. Dr White can
Speaker 1: tell you it's very real. Her husband was on a
Speaker 1: ventilator for two months, nearly dying multiple times. She has
Speaker 1: reviewed every coronavirus JET certificate in the region, Yet every
Speaker 1: day she fights with people who called a pandemic hoax.
Speaker 1: She pleads with people who were exposed to the virus
Speaker 1: to quarantine. She begs others to simply wear a mask.
Speaker 1: Someone compared her to the Soviet unions Joseph Stalin. She
Speaker 1: blames it on COVID becoming so politicized. She says the
Speaker 1: divide has made her job much harder. If people are
Speaker 1: happy with the restrictions and they aren't happy with, you know,
Speaker 1: having to isolate or quarantine, and so you have to
Speaker 1: sometimes tell people things I don't want to hear. But
Speaker 1: all I can do is tell them what this viruses
Speaker 1: and what it's gonna do and what they need to
Speaker 1: do in response. And it's really much Dr White's work
Speaker 1: won't get any easier once COVID vaccines become available. She
Speaker 1: will need to tell people to trust the science. A
Speaker 1: lot of people already don't ad in skepticism from minority
Speaker 1: communities who have been hit especially hard by the virus,
Speaker 1: and you have quite the challenge. There's definitely vaccine hesitancy,
Speaker 1: but there's vaccine hesitancy all the time. And then now
Speaker 1: that you've got this new vaccine, some people are like,
Speaker 1: I think I'm gonna wait and see, and um, I
Speaker 1: think that there's also all these conspiracy theories, and so
Speaker 1: you know, if you can get back down to the
Speaker 1: science of it um and talk to them about all
Speaker 1: the research and the fact that most of these vaccines
Speaker 1: started in preparation to stars and mergs, so there was
Speaker 1: a base on It's not like it just they already
Speaker 1: had a good strong base for the vaccine. So it
Speaker 1: didn't happen overnight. It's not been rushed, you know. Actually
Speaker 1: administering shots will also be hard. Drive throughs are good
Speaker 1: way to space people out, but they also require a
Speaker 1: lot of work to stand up. Back at the fairgrounds,
Speaker 1: dozens of nurses are ready to give flu shots. Cars
Speaker 1: trickle in more slowly than Dr White would like. Nurses
Speaker 1: lounge and soccer chairs waiting for people to show up.
Speaker 1: One nurse, don Leone, has seen the virus's deadly capabilities firsthand.
Speaker 1: I think that people might not respect this barrow is
Speaker 1: the way that we should. Leonie's family had been gathering
Speaker 1: every Sunday to worship together. Somebody brought the virus one
Speaker 1: weekend and infected the others. Nine relatives tested positive. Leonie's mother, father,
Speaker 1: and husband were all hospitalized at the same time. Her
Speaker 1: father died, Her mother and husband recovered. Her husband's still
Speaker 1: experiences lingering effects like shortness of breadth. There's a real
Speaker 1: struggle for families, and it's not just illness. It affects
Speaker 1: other areas of our homes and our loves and um.
Speaker 1: It will affect me for a long time to see
Speaker 1: with us saw my dad went through. Vaccines could return
Speaker 1: a sense of normalcy if enough people get one. That's
Speaker 1: why Dr White's role is so important. Practicing now gives
Speaker 1: her a chance to see what works. You know, the
Speaker 1: flow has gone really well, so we like the way
Speaker 1: it's set up, and I think it's we wouldn't have
Speaker 1: a back up even we'd had to take a lot
Speaker 1: of people for us to get behind, So that's good.
Speaker 1: I think it's been a good walkthrough. I just wish
Speaker 1: we had more people to tast it. The fairgrounds are
Speaker 1: a good place to reach vulnerable residents. They are located
Speaker 1: on the west side of town, home to Shreveport's black community.
Speaker 1: Mayor Perkins says Shreveport is divided into two distinct sections.
Speaker 1: Like most Southern cities, a bus route runs along the fairgrounds.
Speaker 1: Dr White says in the future they could offer walk
Speaker 1: up shots to accommodate residents who can't drive there on
Speaker 1: their own. She also thinks about the best hours to
Speaker 1: reach more workers. These are all elements to consider for
Speaker 1: next time. The question is like this sustainability, So like
Speaker 1: how long would you want to do it this way?
Speaker 1: So would we do it once a week? Would you
Speaker 1: do it, you know, for a full week and say, okay,
Speaker 1: anybody who wants to come. That's what you'd have to
Speaker 1: tweak in your head about, like what are what are
Speaker 1: the other ways we're going to offer. By the end
Speaker 1: of the day, only four hundred of the one thousand,
Speaker 1: five hundred shots are given out. Dr White wonders if
Speaker 1: people already were vaccinated. Because it's now November. The CDC
Speaker 1: had recommended getting a flu shot by the end of October.
Speaker 1: Dr White will share the results from the flu shot
Speaker 1: clinic with her boss, Dr Frank Welch. He leads the
Speaker 1: state health departments immunization planning and he knows the importance
Speaker 1: of thinking ahead. Louisiana has seen its share of hurricanes, floods,
Speaker 1: and tornadoes. Is conducted as an official exercise. So um,
Speaker 1: these things will be with everything. Things will go wrong,
Speaker 1: will be shared with everyone, and we will do and
Speaker 1: what we've falling after action report to say, you know,
Speaker 1: these are the good things, these are the bad things.
Speaker 1: Here's how we solve them. Here's if we didn't solve it,
Speaker 1: and you know, sharing that with our entire state to
Speaker 1: make sure that everyone gets the benefit of those Unlike
Speaker 1: with coronavirus testing, the state has a luxury of months
Speaker 1: to prepare. It will need every second it can get.
Speaker 1: This campaign will be like no other. That was Angelica
Speaker 1: Levito and that's it for our show today. For coverage
Speaker 1: of the outbreak from one and twenty bureaus around the world,
Speaker 1: visit bloomberg dot com, slash coronavirus and if you like
Speaker 1: the show, please leave us a review and a rating
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Speaker 1: help more listeners find our global reporting. The Prognosis Daily
Speaker 1: edition is produced by Tophor foreheads Jordan's Gaspoure, Magnus Hendrickson,
Speaker 1: and me Laura Carlson. Today's main story was reported by
Speaker 1: Angelica Levito. Original music by Leo Sidrin. Our editors are
Speaker 1: Rick Shine and Francesco Levi. Francesco Levi is Bloomberg's head
Speaker 1: of podcasts. Thanks for listening.