Vaccine scarcity depends in part on where you live.
With a record number of Americans dying of Covid-19 every day, immunizing the public against the virus is more urgent than ever. But hundreds of millions of people in the US are simply going to have to wait — probably several months — to get a vaccine. Instead of the 300 million doses the Trump administration originally promised before the end of the year, the two vaccine developers first in line for Food and Drug Administration approval — Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna — are expected to ship 35 million to 40 million doses total before January. Since both vaccines are supposed to be dispensed at two shots per person, that’s enough supply for no more than 20 million people. But even reaching that many people will take some time. The first batch of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine shipped from a Kalamazoo, Michigan, factory Sunday, following the FDA’s emergency use authorization Friday night, and will include only 2.9 million doses. (A scientific committee that advises the FDA will consider whether to recommend authorization of emergency use of Moderna’s vaccine on December 17.) The vaccine developers say efforts to meet their initial year-end targets are being hampered by shortages of raw ingredients. And while both Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech have vowed to ramp up production next year, the exact amount they’ll make still isn’t clear and the estimates keep shifting. Moderna currently says it’ll have 85 million to 100 million doses for the US ready in the first quarter of 2021; Pfizer plans to provide 50 million doses at the end of the second quarter and another 50 million in Q3, according to the Washington Post. It’s not just Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna that are falling short of their original targets: AstraZeneca and Oxford — another Covid-19 vaccine team that was supposed to deliver up to 300 million doses, or 60 percent of the US coronavirus vaccine supply — have been beset by safety and transparency problems that caused them to fall weeks behind on finishing their phase 3 US trial.
