Some Of The Bottlenecks Associated With The Ability To Administer The Vaccine....
We've already seen the problems associated with the testing for Covid-19 and it appears that we finally have mastered testing and worked out all of the bottlenecks associated with testing for Covid. Here are some of the problems we've had to deal with.
- shortages of swabs
- shortages of tests
- shortages of people to do the testing
- lack of sites for testing to be done
- long lines of people wanting and waiting to be tested
We are now faced with even more complicated problems associated with vaccine availability.
We need to look at the issues facing us here in the U.S. re: vaccine availability and the need to administer it to approximately 330 million Americans.
- a temperature sensitive product which presents problems starting with the manufacturing of the product and all through the logistics of getting the finished product from the manufacturer to the end user - every American. Think of all the steps required to accomplish that. Shipping from the manufacturer by plane, train, truck to distribution centers which need to transfer product and further ship it to all the States in the Union and further complicating that once it gets to the State to transfer and ship it to drug wholesalers; hospitals; pharmacies; clinics; MD's offices; etc in the State - all the while being mindful of adequate and complete temperature control until it gets administered to the patient.
- what about just the manufacturing of 330 million doses of the vaccine - times 2 - because the vaccine requires 2 administration of the vaccine - that means the manufacturer has to manufacture 660 million doses. In order to do that there is a need for the glass vial, a rubber stopper and a cap for each vial manufactured. All of these vials must be inspected, labeled and packaged and the shippers they are packaged in must be addressed and shipped to the States. It is then up to the States to pick up the ball and get them distributed to their population - keeping in mind that the same logistical problems are present in the State with respect to maintaining temperature control continuity until the dose is administered to the patient.
- what is the capacity of the glass, rubber stopper and cap raw material manufacturers to produce 660 million doses? Is that the bottleneck - that the vaccine manufacturers can't get the supply of raw materials to even package the vaccine in? Now granted they are packaging in multiple dose vials - so on vial can service up to 6 patients. That reduces some of these raw material manufacturing issues a bit - but we must be mindful that there are a limited amount of pharmaceutical grade glass and rubber manufacturing companies and they are subject to raw material shortages themselves in order to manufacture the finished glass vial or rubber stopper.
- what about the syringes and needles needed to draw up the dose of vaccine in order to administer it to a patient? What is the capacity of the manufacturers of these syringes and needles to manufacture 660 million syringes and needles? And each of these syringes and needles need to be packaged and sterilized? What is the capacity of the sterilization facilities to handle such a great quantity of syringes and needles? What about all the other products that need to be manufactured to handle the non-pandemic related products that need to be manufactured, inspected, labeled and sterilized at the same time - just to keep up with the demand of such products needed to maintain supplies of the regular non-pandemic related health issues.
- what about all the tracking that is needed to keep good records of each vaccine - from manufacture to ultimate administration and make sure that each individual will be tracked to see to it that each receive both doses?
- what about the need to have trained personnel available to actually administer the doses of vaccine to each individual all at the same time that such trained personnel are called to handle the traditional day-to-day workload in their hospitals, pharmacies, clinics and MD's offices?
As you can see there are a myriad of problems associated with ultimately administering 660 million doses of the vaccine and all kinds of bottlenecks along the way.
And this is just to handle the doses required to get the vaccine into Americans. This vaccine needs to be administered all around the world.
I sure hope that the group that is now managing the pandemic and vaccine availability is talking with all the manufacturers of the vaccine; the glass and rubber stopper manufacturers; the syringe and needle manufacturers; and is on top of all the logistical issues of getting a temperature controlled product to the end users - fresh and in tact.
The Defense Production Act must be utilized all up and down this system. All the bottlenecks must be identified and adjusted in order to make this happen for us.
Just digesting the info here in this post - one can see that it will take a lot of patience, planning, coordination and manpower to see us through this - and it will be a long time before we get back to any sense of pre-pandemic normalcy.
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