How Pfizer Plans to Distribute Its Vaccine (It’s Complicated)

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Sat, 2020-11-14 03:24 — mike kraft

For months, scientists and public health experts have been saying the most crucial part of defusing the Covid-19 pandemic will be developing a safe and effective vaccine. So it was cause for celebration this week when Pfizer announced that an early analysis showed its vaccine candidate was more than 90 percent effective.

Now the drug maker, the government and the public health community face a new challenge: quickly making millions of doses of the vaccine and getting them to the hospitals, clinics and pharmacies where they will be injected, two separate times, into people’s arms.

If Pfizer receives authorization for its vaccine from the Food and Drug Administration in the coming weeks, as expected, the company in theory could vaccinate millions of Americans by the end of the year, taking advantage of months of planning and decades of experience.

“I am very confident. I live and breathe this,” Tanya Alcorn, a Pfizer executive overseeing the supply chain for the vaccine, said in an interview on Wednesday. “We have developed a system that does not waste any precious vaccine.”

But Pfizer — like other manufacturers that may soon be authorized to roll out their vaccines — does not fully control its own destiny. The effort will hinge on collaboration among a network of companies, federal and state agencies, and on-the-ground health workers in the midst of a pandemic that is spreading faster than ever through the United States.

Before Pfizer can begin shipping its vaccine, federal and state governments must tell it where to send how many doses. McKesson, a major medical supplier, will have to provide hospitals and other distribution sites with the syringes, needles and other supplies necessary to administer the vaccine.

Employees at those locations will need to be trained to store and administer the vaccine. They will also have to ensure that, three weeks after people get the vaccine, they return for a second dose. And millions of Americans must be persuaded to get the shots in the first place.

We have a lot of confusion at the state and the local health departments level, and a lot of concern about the nitty-gritty of deployment,” said Dr. Saad B. Omer, the director of the Yale Institute for Global Health. “Which places, where to vaccinate, how to get the vaccine there, how to identify people in various risk groups, how to document, how to call back people for the second dose.” ...

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