Thread by @joshmich

You may have seen CDC reporting 4.6 million doses of #COVID19 vaccine have been distributed & 614,117 administered. Why the huge gap between doses distributed vs administered numbers? (short thread)

Some of the gap is from reporting lag: it can take up to 3 days for providers distributing the vaccine to report to state/local health officials, and additional time for officials to report to CDC
covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tra…

Also, doses distributed to states have been held for use in long-term care facilities via the federal pharmacy partnership, which is only now starting to ramp up. Its goal is to reach 4.5 million residents and staff at 55,000 nursing homes nationwide
foxnews.com/health/nursing…

Given the roll out of the pharmacy/LTC efforts, we might expect administered doses will start to climb rapidly in the coming days/weeks.

Still, there are other reasons why there is a gap between the number of doses states have on hand, and doses administered.

Some states are administering vaccines faster than others, even as all are faced with logistical challenges like cold chain and shipment size. It’s “a jigsaw puzzle and balancing act” and states are “building the plane while flying it” khn.org/news/article/i…

There are also differences across states between doses allocated (based on adult population) and the proportion of a state’s population in priority group 1a. All else held equal, some states will “lag in getting shots to the highest risk groups”
usatoday.com/story/news/nat…

So you have a situation like this: "By the time Massachusetts vaccinates the last person in [priority group 1a], Nevada could have moved on" to subsequent priority groups such as 75 and older, and frontline essential workers.

These differences and gaps across states will only grow over time as we move into Phases 1b and 1c, where the logistical challenges of reaching rural areas and potentially hesitant groups looms larger and larger.