COVID Vaccines

Recently there has been a lot of talk on the two developed COVID vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna. For many, this is both relieving and/or scary news to hear. As great as highly effective vaccines for COVID might sound, there are several challenges around the availability and widespread use of this vaccine. One of the main issues is the Trump administration’s unwillingness to begin the transition of power to Joe Biden. This delays Biden’s ability to create a sufficient national response to this pandemic health crisis. Biden has not been given access to Trump’s plan that his team made back in the Spring to produce and distribute these newly developed vaccines. Another challenge is deciding who gets priority access to these vaccines. Many people say that first responders and the more at-risk groups should get it first, others say that whoever is going to produce the fastest economic return after getting the vaccine should get it first since so many people are unemployed as a result of the pandemic. Another large challenge that is often overlooked is within the rural communities in America. Rural communities have been increasingly hit hard during this pandemic and deal with a great percentage of deaths due to their lack of access to healthcare. Many rural community members have to travel hours away to receive care, are under-insured or uninsured, and don’t have access to testing like the more metro or urban areas have. Unfortunately, rural communities are often not prioritized in terms of receiving adequate healthcare, so it is questionable how rural communities will be considered in receiving the COVID vaccines. Especially the fact that there are large geographic differences that would be faced in the distribution process; distribution to Manhattan versus a small rural area in Nebraska would be very different. Another major challenge of the two new vaccines is that Pfizer’s vaccine must be stored in  -70 degrees celsius and Moderna’s at -20 degrees celsius. The Department of Health is working with large chain retail pharmacies to provide ultra-cold freezers and dry ice storage solutions for the vaccines. UPS and Fedex delivery trucks will need to be changed to properly handle the vaccines. And, supply chain companies overall will just have to produce a much greater amount of dry ice, needles, syringes, vials, and stoppers to ensure that this vaccine is able to be widely distributed. Furthermore, this vaccine will need to be administered in two doses to each patient, so that means even more production. Hopefully the government has learned from the PPE shortages earlier in the pandemic and will be able to ensure more confidence in the public in the coming months that there are more than enough supplies to go around for everyone. And of course, another major challenge is who is going to end up paying for the vaccine.

My healthcare systems class has been discussing a lot of this information regarding COVID lately and it’s a lot of stuff that I wouldn’t really read that deep into if I wasn’t in the class. So, I wanted to share some of the stuff that I learned and think is really important to know for the coming few months.