Vaccine Plan Changed, Operation Warp Speed to Release All Available Doses

more people can start the process. Dan Vergano, science reporter at BuzzFeed News, joins us for the rollout changes and concerns from the Biden administration about the new plan. Thanks for joining us, Dan, glad to be with you. Operation warp Speat officials have changed course on their vaccine rollout plan. They want to broaden the amount of people that can

get this right now. I know we're going through these kind of tiered phases and all, but they want to open it up to all people over the age of sixty five and anyone that has high risk conditions such as diabetes, heart disease, obesity. And I think they also want to kind of just throw all the available doses out there. I know we were saving some for a second dose, you know, which is supposed to be taken about three weeks four weeks apart. They just kind of

want to open the floodgates right now. So Dan tell us a little bit about the plan from Operation Warp Speed. So from Operation Warp Speed to viewpoint, what they have done is they've assured themselves that the manufacturers are producing enough vaccine on time, so that if they do instead of holding back a reserve shot for the second dose for everyone, they get a first shot too, but instead they can just sort of send out all the shots they got and be reassured that there will be a

second shot around instead of hanging around for it. And this is an effort to increase the supply of shots out there for the people to get. What they're finding also is that they're not getting good reporting back on who's gotten a shot and when the states jurisdictions are supposed to reply within seventy two hours, Yes, we gave somebody a shot. They're used to do in that in thirty days. And there's the sense that a lot of states aren't, which might explain the low rate of vaccinations overall.

You know, they said they sent out about twenty nine million shot and only about nine million people have gotten one, so there's only about a third of people have gotten the shots they sent out, so there's some frustration there. So they're trying to use a stick like you know, don't report and you don't get any more vaccines. The allocation was just done by state population. Now the allocation is going to be done by over sixty five population. This is an attempt to get more doses to more

people who are at higher risk. There's also as well, sorry to give you the entire rundown, but also they promised that they're going to do more outreach to set up mass vaccination sites and help states with the vaccinations.

It's a recognition that operation more speed while it was making factories to make these vaccines before they proved out and sort of compressing the testing timeline, which you know, although still using all the same safety measures, were still sort of compressed in terms of how they usually do it. That they did not actually assist the states in setting

up places for people to get shots. Where uh, it's clear that the states need more help than they can do by themselves, and so the FEDS are offering them some assistance, right, and We're starting to see that in a lot of places in California where I'm at, Dodger Stadium is being turned into a vaccination site. Disneyland is being turned into a vaccination site. So these big centers are going to start opening up. What does the Biden

administration said about this plan? Because I know they had a similar plan where they wanted to get more people their first doses and just so we can start getting as many people vaccinated as possible. But I know that there's some concerns from them, and they're coming into power next week, so things will change slightly. I'm assuming what

are some of the concerns from the Biden team. So Biden's team last week said that they supported the one part of Operation Work Speeds Change, which is to not hold back the second doses, but to send them out and figure that just in time, the manufacturing will be there to provide those second doses. What you're reading and hearing is that the Biden team is a little bit nervous about them suddenly throwing the gates open. Everybody in the country if you add up all the people in

Group one. This is the priority that the CDC's Advisor Committee set up for which started with healthcare personnel and people in long care nursing homes, and now it's everybody over sixty five and anybody who has a high risk condition. That added like a hundred nine million people to who already were eligible. So you're talking about hundred seventy four

million people. That's half the country, right, So all of a sudden, the Biden folks are walking in there with half the country expecting them to get them a dose tomorrow. And this doesn't add up. First, we aren't getting shots to the people who we do send the dose without for and there ain't a hundred seventy four million times two doses anyway. The manufacturers have promised to deliver something like a hundred million each shots, you know, in the

first quarter of the year. That's only enough for a hundred million people. That's not a hundred and seventy four million people. So they're worried that Trump is sticking them with a promise that he doesn't have to deliver on

and that they're going to be sort of stuck with. Although, of course Biden's campaign pledge was a hundred million shots in the first hundred days of his administration, which looked doable for the numbers that the manufacturers are promising, realizing that a hundred million shots is just fifty million people vaccinated, right because together by number and two. So of course they're looking this gift horse in the mouth here that

Trump has left them with. Of course, how are we looking with regards to people's willingness to actually take the vaccine? Because we're talking about all these vaccines flooding the market, let's say, right, more available for people. But I am still hearing anecdotally at least a lot of people hesitant to take these vaccines. It's clear that there's some hesitancy. Typically only about eight percent of people in the healthcare profession get the flu shot. You know, who should know better?

And here, you know, you do see these reports of different healthcare personel refusing to take it. That's just part of the human tapestry. In polls, something about two thirds to more people say that they'd be willing to take a shot now. But that still leaves you know, the country's population isnty million people more than a hundred million

people who said they wouldn't get a shot. That's a lot of people, right, and that's a drag because we need to get what they call population immunity or sometimes herd immunity. The wrong number in just the naive estimate is at least they're about six of the population immunized. So we're starting to play with that. If we have people who won't even get it, this is what we're gonna see. We saw this with H one and one in two thousand and nine. There's going to be people

who refuse to take it. There's to be people who want to take it. But you know, our complacent and like, I'm pretty healthy, I'll look you do it some other day, and you know, this kind of hesitancy is just going to be, you know, along with waiting in line. You know, it's going to be just part of our experience for the next six to twelve months. The initial rollout of the vaccines has been slow. As we know, we're starting

to ramp things up. I'm hoping nothing but positive things happen with these continued rollouts and changes to the rollout, so we'll see how all of it plays out. Dan Vergano, science reporter at BuzzFeed News, thank you very much for joining us. You bet, I'm Oscar Ramirez, and this has been reopening America. Don't forget that. For today's big news stories, you can check me out on the Daily Dive podcast every Monday through Friday, so follow us on I Heart Radio or wherever you get your podcast