Massachusetts avoids vaccine appointment cancellations after scrambling to address delayed shipment
"Providers will not have to cancel appointments."
After scrambling to address the impacts of a partial delay of the state’s weekly COVID-19 vaccine shipment, Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker’s administration said Friday that they received nearly all of their expected doses after all.
“Governor Baker and the Command Center have been in constant communication with federal officials to rush vaccine shipments to Massachusetts,” Kate Reilly, a spokesperson for the state’s COVID-19 Command Center, said in a statement Friday afternoon.
“Today, 135,025 arrived to the Commonwealth and as a result, providers will not have to cancel appointments,” Reilly said.
State officials had expected to get around 139,000 first-dose shots this week, up from the previous 110,000-dose weekly shipments.
However, widespread delays across the country attributed to the large winter storm system sweeping across most of the country and staffing shortages at the vaccine manufacturing facilities had threatened to put already-scheduled appointments over the coming days at risk. White House officials said Friday that the storm had resulted in a backlog of 6 million COVID-19 doses, affecting all 50 states.
Baker’s administration says they were told Wednesday night by federal officials that “part” of this week’s committed vaccine shipment would be delayed until Monday. Officials said they were “doing everything possible” to shift the state’s existing vaccine inventory to ensure appointments did not have to be canceled. Baker even said he was trying to get federal approval Thursday to send the Massachusetts National Guard to the national vaccine shipping hubs in Louisville and Memphis to bring back the state’s shipment of doses.
“The Administration is imploring the federal government to do everything in its power to rectify the delay immediately,” Reilly said in an earlier statement.
While operators of the state’s mass vaccination sites had said their operations wouldn’t be affected, some smaller clinics said they faced the prospect of canceling appointments over the weekend due to a lack of doses. A planned clinic for local veterans in Plymouth operated by the Veterans Affairs health care system, which is vaccinating veterans independently from the state rollout, was also postponed until next weekend due to shipping delays.
“Going forward, Governor Baker urges the federal government to provide larger shipments and more lead time for the state, so more eligible residents can get their shots as quickly and safely as possible,” Reilly said Friday.
In response to calls for a vaccine appointment preregistration system, Baker argued this week that knowing exactly how many doses Massachusetts would get from President Joe Biden’s administration over three or four weeks would give the state more flexibility to make appointments available, rather than the current week-by-week basis. While the federal government has given states three-weeks notice on the “minimum” number of doses shipped each week, Baker says the ability to validate orders three or four weeks in advance would ease the complexity of distributing and accessing the state’s limited supply of doses.
“I would love to have the congressional delegation urge the Biden administration to give states three or four weeks of solid, committed visibility into what’s coming,” Baker told reporters Wednesday.
The concerns about delays come as the Baker administration has shifted supply toward the higher-efficiency mass vaccination sites — and away from local health departments in all but 20 particularly hard-hit communities, amid outcry from some local officials.
State officials say they filled 60,000 of an initially planned 70,000 new appointments across the six mass vaccinations on Thursday, after allowing residents between the ages of 65 and 74 and those with certain medical conditions that put them at high risk for COVID-19 to begin signing up to get immunized.
As of Thursday night, after widespread technical difficulties with the state’s vaccine appointment website earlier in the day, the Command Center said appointments at mass vaccinations for next week had been completely booked, but that “a small number of appointments” would be posted over the next several days at smaller sites, including pharmacies and regional collaboratives.
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