States face Friday deadline from CDC to submit plans to distribute coronavirus vaccine

Friday marks the deadline for state health officials across the U.S. to submit plans to the federal government on how they will inoculate hundreds of millions ofAmericans against Covid-19 once a vaccine is approved. 

States have about two weeks to set up distribution centers across the country to meet the Nov. 1 deadline set by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — a monumental undertaking made even more difficult by the fact that a vaccine hasn’t been cleared by the Food and Drug Administration and clinical trials of two of the four leading candidates have been halted.

Most of the potential vaccines require two doses, although Johnson & Johnson’s requires just one shot, and some of them need to be transported and stored at varying and specific temperatures.

“Everybody needs to realize it’s not going to be seamless,” said Dr. Marcus Plescia, chief medical officer at the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials. “This is an ambitious undertaking, but we will get there and I think the fact that we have an opportunity to get a little bit in front of something and plan for it is going to make a difference.”

Operation Warp Speed

Once a vaccine is approved, U.S. officials will need tofigure out how many doses go to each state or region. States will then be responsible for disbursing the doses to local providers, according to the CDC’s guidelines.

“Government does not do these large operational complex functions easily or well,” New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, told reporters on a conference call Thursday. “And the federal government has shown that it doesn’t have the operational capacity to do these things. That’s why the federal government at the beginning of Covid just delegated it all to the states.”

The federal government is in the process of “actively engaging tens of thousands of provider outlets for these vaccines,” Paul Mango, deputy chief of staff for policy in the Department of Health and Human Services, told reporters on an Oct. 9 call. The CDC is also in the process of helping native tribes decide on the best option for vaccine allocation, the agency’s deputy director for infectious diseases, Jay Butler, told reporters on the same call.

Mango added that the U.S. currently has assembled 40 million-plus vaccination kits with the bottles, needles and other items needed for the shots.

“All of those are in warehouses ready to go, so that’s a big logistical task or undertaking,” he said. Supplies, such as needles and syringes, will be automatically ordered in amounts to match vaccine orders.

However, storage and handling of the vaccine will depend on “which vaccines become available and what amount and when,” Butler said.

Because Pfizer’s vaccine needs to be stored at 94 degrees below zero, requiring special storage equipment and transportation, the company’s only shipping about 500 to 1,000 doses at a time. The longer it sits on a shelf, the greater a chance it will go bad, Butler said. By comparison, Moderna’s vaccine candidate will need to be stored at 4 degrees below zero.

There are already tens of thousands ofpotential vaccination centers in the U.S., but not all of them will have the ultra-cold freezers required for some of the vaccines.