After a Coronavirus Vaccine Is Approved Comes the Hard Part: Distributing It to Millions

We are moving at record speed to develop and approve a vaccine for the coronavirus, but after that comes the hard part: distributing the vaccine. The coordination, planning, and communication needed to pull this off will be so complex and it has many worried, considering the poor response to the pandemic by the administration so far. Lena Sun, health reporter at the Washington Post, joins us for what could be the largest vaccination campaign ever undertaken.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
It's Tuesday, August four. I'm Oscar Emiraz from the Daily
Dive podcast in Los Angeles, and this is Reopening America.
We're moving at record speed to develop and approve a
vaccine for the coronavirus. But after that comes the hard
part distributing the vaccine. The coordination, planning, and communication needed
to pull this off will be so complex, and it

(00:21):
has many worried considering the poor response to the pandemic
by the administration so far. Lena's son, reporter at the
Washington Post, joins us for what could be the largest
vaccination campaign ever undertaken. Thanks for joining us, Lena, Thank
you for having me. I wanted to talk a little
bit more about the coronavirus vaccine and when we finally

(00:42):
get it as it is, it's been moving at warp
speed just for the development of it. We're in phase
three trials for a number of candidates now, but once
those get approved, then it's another hard part. At equally
or even harder part is to distribute it to tens
of millions of people. I mean saying the US population
could be the single largest vaccination campaign ever undertaken and

(01:06):
has a lot of people worried. We've seen how the
administration has handled a lot of the pandemic so far,
the response to it, and it's been uneasy at best,
let's say. And this immunization effort is going to take
a ton of coordination and planning and communication between the
government and individual states. It's going to be really tough.

(01:26):
So Lena, tell us a little bit about what it's
going to look like to distribute all of these vaccines.
As you mentioned, it is going to require a lot
of coordination, and part of the confusion comes from the
lack of information that has come out from the administration.
President Trump and officials have repeatedly said that the military

(01:48):
is going to be involved in the distribution, but they
haven't given the specifics of how that's going to work.
And the existing immunization infrastructure in this country is a
network that pushes out millions of doses of routine childhood
vaccinations every year, and it was used during the two

(02:08):
thousand and nine H one N one swine flu pandemic.
CDC runs that network with the States and they basically
scaled it up to push out vaccine influenza vaccine in
that pandemic. This time around it's not exactly clear whether
they're going to rely solely on the CDC system, whether

(02:30):
they're going to create a new system, or whether it's
going to be some kind of hybrid. At a briefing
that was given for reporters last week, the Health and
Human Services Department, which is the lead agency for the
pandemic response, told us that it was going to be
a hybrid and that d D was going to do
everything related to the logistics getting the vaccine to the

(02:53):
right places at the right times, in the right conditions.
Remember we're talking about multiple vaccine candidates. Some of the
vaccines may need to be stored at temperatures you know,
mnus eighty degrees that you might need special freezers or refrigerators,
And the different vaccines may require different dosing. You might
you might need two doses fourteen days apart or two

(03:14):
doses twenty eight days apart, and you need to make
sure that whoever is getting the vaccine is getting the
right dose from the right manufacturer, and if they have
to come back for a second dose, that they're getting
the right one. So it's very complicated logistically, and you
need to know how it's going to be distributed to
get pushed out. There was a meeting last week where

(03:38):
CDC told the groups involved in immunization that the model
is going to be one based very similar on what
was used in two thousand and nine, and in that
case there was a central distributor. States would have to
prioritize and approve the request for vaccine and then the
central distributor would push out the vaccine. But it's not

(04:00):
been very clear at all, and the people most closely
involved in this effort have been trying to glean information
and bits and pieces from telephone calls and webinars, and
really they say, you just need to put it out
and be transparent so everybody knows how this is going
to work. Just reading through some of this and all

(04:20):
the questions and open endedness of it was making my
head spin kind of because you know, we have to
get this right the first time, and the timing is
so crucial. As you mentioned, some of these vaccines might
need to be refrigerated a specific way. There's could be
a worry of them expiring if they're sitting too long
or just don't make it to their destination in time.
The logistics of this is pretty mind boggling. And then

(04:42):
there comes about people's distrust of vaccines already as related
to this, you know, seven and ten Americans say they
would get a vaccine to protect against COVID nineteen, but
there's one and seven Americans say they wouldn't because they
distrust vaccines in general. You also have to factor in
communities of color that aren't all least trusting of government
entities and how they roll things out, and they're the

(05:04):
ones that are most at risk. So there's just a
lot of questions, and you're mentioning how groups are starting
to plan ahead. The National Association of Governors said, you
need to start planning now for how this is all
going to be rolled out. Nobody wants to get caught
flat footed on this. It sounds like it's like far
far away, right, But the problem is you don't know
when you're going to have those first limited doses you know,

(05:26):
might be tens of millions of doses. Even the pharmaceutical
companies have been offering these very rosy predictions of how
much they're going to be able to turn out, and
you need to plan now. But if you don't have
the specifics, as some of the state officials were telling me,
then you sort of have to double plan. Right, if
the state is going to be involved in distribution and

(05:47):
play a bigger role, do they need to go least
warehouse space, do they need to go rent freezers and refrigerators,
or if they're going to rely on the traditional way
of doing things, okay, but if you don't know, you
sort of have to plan for both scenarios. And guess what.
We are still in the middle of a really serious
pandemic surging everywhere, and it's the same people who have

(06:08):
to deal with the outbreak and deal with the coronavirus
pandemic and also all the other public health things. There's
not like a whole separate team waiting around just to
do that. Yeah, I mean, as you said, I think
I think you said it right. We've got to put
the plan out there, and if it needs to be
modified as we go, that's great. But at least people states,
whatever entity is working on the distribution of it, have

(06:30):
this guideline that they can work on to start implementing.
It's going to be the hugest undertaking that we've gone
through with these vaccination programs. And I mean it's, like
I said, we just got to get it right the
first time, if we can. Lena Son, health reporter at
the Washington Post, thank you very much for joining us,
Thank you for having me. I'm Oscar Ramirez and this

(06:52):
has been reopening America. Don't forget that. For today's big
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