Speaker 1: Welcome the prognosis. I'm Laura Carlson. It's day three hundred
Speaker 1: and seven since coronavirus was declared a global pandemic. Today's
Speaker 1: main story. The vaccine rollout in the US has been chaotic.
Speaker 1: What can we expect will change under a Biden administration?
Speaker 1: But first, here's what happened in virus News today. The
Speaker 1: world's about to hit a frightening COVID nineteen benchmark, with
Speaker 1: two million people dead, Global infections aren't expected to start
Speaker 1: dropping anytime soon. The US is leading all countries and deaths,
Speaker 1: with Brazil, India, Mexico and the UK next in line. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: New York City will run out of vaccines next week.
Speaker 1: The city's mayor, build A. Blasio said in an interview
Speaker 1: today that there will be no more doses available after
Speaker 1: this week unless there is the supply infusion. Hospitals across
Speaker 1: the city have canceled or stopped scheduling appointments for people
Speaker 1: to get the COVID nineteen vaccine. In Italy, an advisor
Speaker 1: says the country needs to reimpose strict lockdown measures. Walter Richiardi,
Speaker 1: an advisor to the health minister, said in an interview
Speaker 1: that the current system of on again, off again curbs
Speaker 1: has failed to prevent a coronavirus resurgence. The original European
Speaker 1: epicenter of the pandemic, Italy, imposed a nationwide lockdown in
Speaker 1: the spring, despite more than two million virus cases to
Speaker 1: date and a resurgence in recent weeks. The government has
Speaker 1: thus far opted for a three tier system based on
Speaker 1: regional restrictions that are generally softer the the measures scene
Speaker 1: last spring. Finally, Fiser has notified countries around the world
Speaker 1: that it will deliver fewer doses of its COVID nineteen
Speaker 1: vaccine in the next three to four weeks as it
Speaker 1: works to renovate a factory in Belgium. The renovations will
Speaker 1: serve to boost capacity from mid February. According to statements
Speaker 1: from Norway, Germany and the company. The factory in Pures
Speaker 1: supplies the vaccine to all countries in the world outside
Speaker 1: of the US. That's according to the German Health Ministry.
Speaker 1: And now for today's main story. An accelerating rush to
Speaker 1: give coronavirus vaccines to Americans has caused confusion over who
Speaker 1: can get a shot when, and the difficulty getting shots
Speaker 1: or even information about the vaccine is complicating to push
Speaker 1: towards widespread immunity. I spoke to health reporter Michelle fake
Speaker 1: Cortez about what's going wrong with the vaccine rollout thus
Speaker 1: far and whether the upcoming Biden administration's plans for it
Speaker 1: will improve anything. COVID nineteen vaccines have been available in
Speaker 1: the US for almost over a month now, but there
Speaker 1: still seems to be a great deal of confusion about
Speaker 1: who is eligible to get a vaccine and where one
Speaker 1: can get a vaccine. I mean, just briefly, what has
Speaker 1: led to things being so unclear at this point In
Speaker 1: the United States, Every location has their own vaccine approach,
Speaker 1: and when I say location, I don't even mean state
Speaker 1: or city. In some cases it's by county or even
Speaker 1: by hospital. So where you go and when you go
Speaker 1: in order to get access to a vaccine changes depending
Speaker 1: on where you live. Not only that, the rules them
Speaker 1: elves are changing. So in some cases, in some places,
Speaker 1: if you're sixty five and older, universally you can get
Speaker 1: access to the vaccinations, regardless of whether you're a health
Speaker 1: care worker, first responder, if you have other medical conditions
Speaker 1: or anything. In some other cases, it's still very specific.
Speaker 1: Only people who work in a hospital or live in
Speaker 1: a nursing home can get access. So that's the first
Speaker 1: level of complexity. The second level of complexity is that
Speaker 1: even for those who do have access, actually accessing that
Speaker 1: access is challenging. There are websites set up. Sometimes it's
Speaker 1: the state or the city that has set up the websites,
Speaker 1: sometimes it's a hospital. Those get overwhelmed. Many of them
Speaker 1: are crashing repeatedly, and there's just no consistent outlet for
Speaker 1: information on who, when, where to get vaccinations. And it
Speaker 1: is an unbelievable conglomeration of formation and really no one
Speaker 1: has mastered it yet. Is it also an issue of
Speaker 1: enough people trained to store or administer the vaccines in
Speaker 1: this particular moment as we're speaking right now, there is
Speaker 1: not an issue with supply, not when it comes to
Speaker 1: the vaccines and not when it comes to the people
Speaker 1: who are willing to administer them. That being said, as
Speaker 1: we start rolling out more and more, supply is going
Speaker 1: to be a critical issue. There's no way that we'll
Speaker 1: be able to get that many shots into people's arms
Speaker 1: in order to accommodate everyone who wants to get one.
Speaker 1: That being said, we are seeing astonishing stories across the
Speaker 1: country of healthcare workers who are volunteering, people who are
Speaker 1: working in emergency rooms during the day and volunteering at
Speaker 1: night to give injections, people who normally work in nursing
Speaker 1: homes in other places going and doing the check ins
Speaker 1: and volunteering their time and effort, because this really is
Speaker 1: a nationwide effort, and especially those people on the front
Speaker 1: lines really do know how urgent it is that we
Speaker 1: get these vaccinations out there. Just last night, President elect
Speaker 1: Joe Biden announced a one point nine trillion dollar plan
Speaker 1: to combat the pandemic, including a strategy for rebooting the
Speaker 1: vaccine rollout. I was wondering if you might go into
Speaker 1: some detail about what exactly he's proposing and whether you
Speaker 1: think it's going to be enough to turn this around.
Speaker 1: President elect Biden has been very clear from the beginning
Speaker 1: that he wants to have a more national approach when
Speaker 1: it comes to fighting coronavirus. That's certainly the case when
Speaker 1: it comes to this vaccination rollout, which of course is
Speaker 1: going to be the foundation for getting rid of the
Speaker 1: virus not only in the US but in the world.
Speaker 1: So he unrolled a twenty billion dollar plan to make
Speaker 1: sure that we have a universal vaccination program in place.
Speaker 1: This is going to be critically important because it's going
Speaker 1: to take the process away from that free for all
Speaker 1: that we're seeing among the states and locations and really
Speaker 1: kind of hone it in. Most critically, it's going to
Speaker 1: give the states and locations the money that it needs
Speaker 1: to get this work done, and in many cases, what
Speaker 1: we've seen is the lack of money and manpower that
Speaker 1: has made it such a challenge. Now the details of
Speaker 1: the program are still to come, but we do know
Speaker 1: that it's going to be a twenty billion dollar effort.
Speaker 1: It's going to involve things like helping locations rent out
Speaker 1: big spaces like sports stadiums and amphitheaters, including doing things
Speaker 1: like setting up twenty four hour vaccination clinics and even
Speaker 1: even putting some of them on wheels, getting out some
Speaker 1: mobile units that will be able to bring the vaccines
Speaker 1: to the more rural and remote parts of our country
Speaker 1: so that everybody will have access to the vaccine, not
Speaker 1: just based on where they live. As far as the
Speaker 1: ability to hit President elect Biden's goal, which is a
Speaker 1: hundred million vaccinations in the first hundred days of his presidency,
Speaker 1: that's going to be a little bit of a challenge.
Speaker 1: We've already seen that we're getting closer to the rate
Speaker 1: of one million vaccinations a day as the healthcare system
Speaker 1: has been rolling out this process. So we are getting better,
Speaker 1: but there is going to be a heavy lift to
Speaker 1: get us to the next level. Now. One of the
Speaker 1: elements that has popped up in the news quite a
Speaker 1: bit is the difficulty in storing these vaccines that level
Speaker 1: of fragility in terms of making sure that the vaccine
Speaker 1: is still viable. How perhaps is that contributing to some
Speaker 1: of the confusion about how quickly vaccines can be distributed
Speaker 1: and administered. One of the challenges is definitely the fact
Speaker 1: that these first vaccines that we have are m RNA vaccines,
Speaker 1: the kind that have to be kept in subarctic temperatures.
Speaker 1: The key problem here is that once you thaw them,
Speaker 1: they have to be used right away. You can't save
Speaker 1: them up for later. There are stories of people who
Speaker 1: are offered the vaccine because they're in a grocery store,
Speaker 1: or they're walking down a street close to a vaccination
Speaker 1: clinic that has extra shots left over, and they're going
Speaker 1: to have to throw them away, so they're out there
Speaker 1: scrambling to give them to anyone that might be willing
Speaker 1: to take them. For lack of better explanation, that's becoming
Speaker 1: less and less common as the number of people who
Speaker 1: can qualify have been increased in these locations. Understand that
Speaker 1: they need to have a bigger number of people waiting
Speaker 1: so that we have people waiting for the vaccine, not
Speaker 1: the vaccine waiting for the people, So we're seeing less
Speaker 1: and less of that. Another concern is that the vaccines
Speaker 1: are difficult to break down into smaller lots, so they
Speaker 1: get sent out in large numbers and you have to
Speaker 1: vaccinate a large number of people at one time, so
Speaker 1: it's harder to get to rural and small areas. I mean,
Speaker 1: there does seem to be a push and pull debate
Speaker 1: going on right now almost globally about whether to immunize
Speaker 1: as many people as quickly as possible or making sure
Speaker 1: the eligible people, the people in line for first, get
Speaker 1: their doses first. Absolutely, it's exactly what we're talking about here.
Speaker 1: The issue is quantity versus quality, and it's the issue
Speaker 1: of what's good for the global health versus what's good
Speaker 1: for the individual health. So we know that in order
Speaker 1: to get protection against the virus, we're going to need
Speaker 1: to get to hurt immunity. That means at least the
Speaker 1: population is either going to need to have been vaccinated
Speaker 1: or to have been infected with the virus. The best
Speaker 1: way to get to those kind of numbers is to
Speaker 1: just open the spigots and vaccinate as many people as
Speaker 1: you can. Let's get the line set up and just
Speaker 1: go seven as much as you can. Use every bit
Speaker 1: of the vaccine the minute it comes off of the
Speaker 1: the production line, get it into someone's arms. That's the
Speaker 1: most efficient way to get to those high numbers. The
Speaker 1: challenge there is that there's some portions of the population
Speaker 1: that are significantly lower risk. So if you're going to
Speaker 1: be vaccinating people like you and need potentially who are younger,
Speaker 1: perhaps more healthy, don't have as many comorbidities, not living
Speaker 1: in a nursing home, not seeing patients with coronavirus every day,
Speaker 1: the fact that we're protected against it is going to
Speaker 1: have less global impact on the virus itself, and it's
Speaker 1: going to have less benefit in terms of reducing deaths,
Speaker 1: for example, because we would be already at low risk
Speaker 1: for contracting the virus and dying from it. So the
Speaker 1: issue is whether you really want to make sure that
Speaker 1: the right people get vaccinated, which is a more difficult ask.
Speaker 1: You have to have more hurdles, you have to have
Speaker 1: more slatting, You have to be evaluating each person as
Speaker 1: opposed to just opening up the floodgates. On the other hand,
Speaker 1: if you open the floodgates, fewer of those people who
Speaker 1: are high risk are going to be able to get vaccinated.
Speaker 1: They're going to be competing against millions and millions of
Speaker 1: other people who need it. So it's a question of
Speaker 1: what do you want to do. Do you want to
Speaker 1: protect all the healthcare workers, do you want to protect
Speaker 1: for the people who are most likely to die. Do
Speaker 1: you want to protect first the people who are most
Speaker 1: likely to be spreading the virus, or do you just
Speaker 1: want to get to hurt immunity as quickly as you can.
Speaker 1: The paths to both of those things are different, and
Speaker 1: every state, every location is trying to split the difference
Speaker 1: here and figure out how they want to best protect
Speaker 1: their populations, you know, trying to adhere to perhaps the
Speaker 1: quality side versus the quantity side, making sure the people
Speaker 1: most at risk are getting those doses first is a
Speaker 1: very tall logistical order, and and there have been accusations
Speaker 1: that really America's infrastructure just can't cope with this. I mean,
Speaker 1: what what is your response to that, you know, is
Speaker 1: the system as it exists able to handle this incredibly
Speaker 1: complex logistical challenge. It's a great question, and it's only
Speaker 1: going to get worse as the numbers get bigger. I
Speaker 1: think the challenge that we've seen early on in this
Speaker 1: endeavor to start vaccinations is the fact that it's the
Speaker 1: beginning of this massive undertaking. It's just hard to get
Speaker 1: these shots out to people, going through the cold changed storage,
Speaker 1: thawing everything, handling everything in exactly the right way, knowing
Speaker 1: which people you want to send to which nursing home,
Speaker 1: and administering all the shots. It's just tricky. And the
Speaker 1: more that they do that, the more that our healthcare
Speaker 1: professionals are on the front lines and getting this done,
Speaker 1: the more smoothly this process is going to happen. The
Speaker 1: challenge is that we're going to have millions and millions
Speaker 1: more people who are lining up and wanting this in
Speaker 1: the days and weeks to come. We did see challenges
Speaker 1: early on. I don't think that should have been surprising
Speaker 1: for anyone, But really, we were only trying to vaccinate
Speaker 1: twenty million or fewer people in these first few weeks. Now,
Speaker 1: with both the Trump administration and the Biden administration saying
Speaker 1: that we should be trying to vaccinate everybody sixty five
Speaker 1: and older, that's a hundred and twenty eight million people.
Speaker 1: So the challenge is just going to be exponentially greater.
Speaker 1: That was Michelle Fake Cortez. And that's it for our
Speaker 1: show today. For coverage of the outbreak from one hundred
Speaker 1: and twenty bureaus around the world, visit Bloomberg dot com
Speaker 1: slash Coronavirus and if you like the show, please leave
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Speaker 1: global reporting. The Prognosis Daily edition is produced by Topher
Speaker 1: foreheads Magnus Henrickson and me Laura Carlson. Today's main story
Speaker 1: was reported by Michelle Fake Quartets. Original music by Leo Sidrin.
Speaker 1: Our editors are Rick Shine and Francesca Levi. Francesco Levi
Speaker 1: is Bloomberg's head of Podcasts. Thanks for listening.