Thread by @MarkLevineNYC

The US's next wave is taking off, driven by fast spread of more contagious variants in a handful of states.

But no extra vaccine allocation is being sent to these areas.

It's a nat'l imperative to slow these variants. Fed gov't needs to surge extra supply to the hot spots. 1/

The main variants taking over in the Northeast and Midwest are B.1.1.7 (UK) and B.1.526 (NYC). Current evidence is that--thankfully--vaccines now in use offer protection against these variants.

That's why we need aggressive vaccination to stop this. 2/

The current pace of vaccination in the hot spot cities and states is not enough. Cases and even hospitalizations are rising.

We need a significant, immediate boost in the supply of vaccines in these locations to win this race.

3/

Surging supply to the variant hot spots is in the national interest, in order to avoid a full-blown fourth wave--even if that means diverting supply from places with outbreaks under control.

4/

As @zeynep writes:

"It doesn’t make sense to vaccinate 25-year-olds in places with very low levels of circulation before seniors and frontline workers in places where there is an outbreak."
theatlantic.com/health/archive… 5/

Hot spot areas also need to stop reopenings, increase testing, and urge the public to continue taking precautions (masks etc).

But there's no avoiding it: the federal gov't needs to send us more vaccine supply. ASAP. 6/6