# 3830
The roll out of the pandemic vaccine is barely underway and there are understandably questions and concerns over exactly how all of this will play out.
Overnight I received one such query, asking about the fate of vaccine shipments leaving the factory nearly 2-weeks ago.
I intended to answer in the comments section, but decided at the last minute to place it in a new essay, so that more people might access it.
Anonymous said... I would just like to point out that tomorrow (Tuesday) will be TWO WEEKS since the first injected H1N1 vaccine left the Sanofi-Pasteur plant in Swiftwater, Pennsylvania.
As far as I can tell, this truckload, and any subsequent truck loads, have simply vanished. There is not a single instance in the press of anyone getting injected vaccine for H1N1 yet.
What the hell is happening?
Is this vaccine stuck in some sort of nightmarish Katrina-like screw-up? We all remember the truckloads of emergencies supplies that circled the country during Katrina.
Anonymous,
I appreciate your concern, but this really isn’t quite as mysterious as it might first appear. While I don’t know exactly what the status is of the truck that left the factory, here is my understanding of the process.
All vaccine leaving the plants goes to one of several temperature-controlled distribution warehouses located around the country. Each truckload is unloaded, the vaccine is logged in, and added to the computerized inventory.
Once sufficient stockpiles are established in all warehouses . . . individual states are notified that they can begin ordering vaccine. Those orders go to a central clearing house, which then authorizes the direct over-night shipment from the closest warehouse.
During the first week or so, only the FluMist has been shipping.
The last I heard, the first shipments of the injectable vaccine were supposed to begin shipping to some of the states this week. I’m not sure how much, or to where, or even if that schedule will be met.
This is, as you might imagine, a very complicated process. This is the biggest rollout of vaccine in history.
Every lot of vaccine must be identified and tracked as to exactly where it went. Each order must also be matched up with ancillary supplies, such as syringes and vaccination cards, that ship at roughly the same time.
Vaccines can only ship Mondays-Thursday, because you can’t have it sit –undelivered on some Health Department doorstep in a non-temperature controlled environment - over the weekend.
There are literally thousands of individual county health departments putting in orders, and over time, the HHS expects to eventually be able to deliver vaccine and supplies to as many as 90,000 individual distribution venues.
For now, however, that number is considerably smaller.
So, as you can see, it was never expected that a truck load of vaccine would leave the factory and show up, a few days later amid great fanfare at some health department somewhere.
The plan, all along, was to send the vaccine to a warehouse, from where it would be over-night shipped in much smaller lots to Health Departments across the nation.
I wouldn't expect, however, that in the opening weeks all will go smoothly. This is an incredibly complicated new system, and there will be bugs and glitches to work out.
The CDC expects a bumpy few weeks. As do I.
I hope this solves the mystery and puts everyone’s mind at ease.
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Note: This is basically how the operation was described to me in Washington several weeks ago. I’m working from my (oft times faulty) memory.
If anyone from the HHS or CDC is reading this, and I’ve gotten any of it wrong, please feel free to contact me and I’ll make a correction.
