Some items that have caught my eye over the past few days:
- After the slow start over the holidays, states seem to be doing a better job of sticking needles in peoples’ arms. Bloomberg’s vaccine tracker says states have used about a third of the doses they have, amounting to more than 1 percent of the whole population. Keep going!
- Something states absolutely must avoid is letting doses expire. Andrew Cuomo’s threats of million-dollar fines for providers who break the government’s prioritization order are probably a bad way to achieve that. Prioritization is important, but if a shot is about to expire, just grab a pizza-delivery guy off the street and stick him with it.
- In the vaccines’ trials, people were given two doses about a month apart. That’s the schedule we’ve tested most rigorously and can be most confident in. However, we also know that a single dose of the vaccine is pretty effective for some time, likely at least two to three months. As a result, there’s a big push for governments to focus on getting as many people the first dose as possible, and to worry about second doses as more supply becomes available — rather than holding a second dose in reserve for every first dose given, as under current practice.
- Another possibility is simply cutting the Moderna vaccine’s doses in half. There’s evidence that half-doses are about as effective as full ones.
- Some experts are worried that a new genetic variant from South Africa is different enough from previous strains that it might evade the vaccines. The companies could retool the shots to attack the new variant, but obviously this could be a huge setback.