Editor’s Note: Michael Dowling is president and chief executive officer of Northwell Health, New York State’s largest health care provider and employer. The opinions expressed in this commentary are his own.
As the coronavirus continues to spread rampantly throughout the United States, it is urgent that government agencies and health care providers embrace an “all hands-on-deck” emergency response approach to vaccinate Americans equitably, safely and as quickly as possible. Admittedly, the effort is off to a slow start, but it’s fruitless and unfair to blame federal or state governments, or the millions of health care workers trying to administer the vaccine while caring for the more than 128,000 Americans now hospitalized with the virus.
While the federal government’s “Operation Warp Speed” has delivered more than 31 million doses of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines to date, only about 12 million of them have been administered. The reason? So far, most of the responsibility has fallen on state and local governments and health care organizations to set up an adequate infrastructure to seamlessly deliver the vaccine to the expanding number of people permitted to get it.
Understandably, the public does not want to hear excuses about why it’s taking so long, but vaccinating hundreds of millions of people is an unprecedented national undertaking that requires enormous resources and staffing, as well as flawless timing, precision and execution.
The supply chain begins with the federal government, which arranges for the vaccines to be shipped to individual states, based largely on their populations and how many people are eligible. Because of the daunting logistical challenges, it has taken states, local governments and health care providers a couple of weeks to establish a workable infrastructure for storing the vaccine; distributing doses to individual hospitals, doctors’ offices and other medical practices; working with county and city governments to identify “point of distribution” sites in local communities; setting up IT systems to schedule appointments based on available supply; validating people’s eligibility; administering doses of the vaccine before they expire; and then scheduling and arranging for second doses.
Now that the infrastructure is in place, the process is becoming much more seamless. In New York, the state has established 10 regional vaccination hubs, led mostly by local hospitals and health systems. New York’s largest health system, Northwell Health, which I lead, is responsible for working with Nassau and Suffolk counties to vaccinate 2.3 million eligible people on Long Island. So far, we have inoculated about 58,000 people, including health care workers and frontline caregivers in the community.
The good news is we now have the ability to vaccinate up to 20,000 people a day on Long Island. But the supply is not going to meet the demand in the weeks ahead, raising concerns about our ability to administer second doses in a timely manner while also reaching those who are newly eligible with a first dose.
Presuming that larger shipments will eventually make their way into our communities, health officials must focus on reaching people in areas hit hard by the virus, especially minority communities that have been disproportionately impacted. At New York Governor Andrew Cuomo’s request, Northwell established a Health Equity Task Force and is working closely with community leaders on how to best educate residents about the vaccine’s safety, efficacy and availability, while continuing to promote mask-wearing and social distancing.
To build and maintain confidence among Americans, it’s also imperative that we roll out extensive, timely and easy-to-understand public service campaigns to educate consumers about the limited supply, high demand and tight eligibility requirements that will drag out this vaccination effort for several months.
Literally, tens of thousands of lives hinge on our ability to do it right and put an end to this terrible crisis. But rest assured, just as the health care community has risen to the occasion to save millions of lives during this pandemic, we will succeed in administering the vaccine to all those who want and need it.
