Dr. Scott Gottlieb, the former commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, said over the weekend that the United States’ COVID-19 vaccination plan isn’t working.
What happened:
Gottlieb told CBS’ “Face the Nation” over the weekend that the United States’ plan needs to be rebooted in order to be effective.
- “We need to acknowledge that it’s not working,” Gottlieb said. “We need to hit the reset and adopt a new strategy in trying to get that out to patients.”
He added that getting the vaccine out quickly is the only hope to stopping COVID-19.
- “We really need to get this vaccine out more quickly, because this is really our only tool,” he said.
What’s the problem?
Across the country, states have started to distribute the COVID-19 vaccine. But distribution isn’t meeting projected numbers given by the Trump administration. There have been reports of COVID-19 vaccines just sitting in shelves — which is one reason why Utah Gov. Spencer Cox decided to speed up the process for vaccinations with an executive order.
Gottlieb said distribution is the main issue with the current vaccination plan. There is plenty of supply — but there’s no way to distribute the vaccine in mass quantities out to the people.
- “A lot of senior citizens aren’t going to want to go to a, you know, a stadium to get an inoculation. They’re going to want to go to a pharmacy, a local pharmacy or a doctor’s office. So, we need to provide more opportunity for people to get a vaccination where they’re comfortable getting it. But we do need to get these out more aggressively. Right now, you’re right, it’s a distribution issue. It will become a supply issue once we get the logistics down, right. And we don’t have that right now. We aren’t doing a good job getting this to patients.”
A solution?
Gottlieb said on CBS’ “Face the Nation” last weekend that CVS, Walgreens and other locations should start giving out vaccines, as I wrote about for the Deseret News.
- “Make the vaccine more generally available through the retail pharmacies, through Walmart and Walgreens and CVS to a broader population, to a general population starting with age,” Gottlieb said in an interview on “Face the Nation.” “We can walk it down the age continuum, make it available for 75 and above first, then 70 and above and 65 and above. There’s 50 million Americans 65 and above, a large percentage of them probably want to be vaccinated. At some point, we need to allow supply to meet demand here and get the shots into the arms of the people who really want to get vaccinated and are going to go out and seek out the vaccination.”