About 10 million people have received one of the new COVID-19 vaccines, a spokesperson for U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration said.
“The administration remains committed to pulling every lever at its disposal during the fall respiratory vaccination campaign, encouraging the American public to stay up to date on their vaccines to keep themselves and their loved ones safe,” a spokeswoman for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) told The Epoch Times via email on Oct. 18.
“As a result of these efforts, around 10 million Americans have been vaccinated since the updated vaccines were authorized, and recommended last month,” the spokeswoman added.
The 10 million figure, about 3 percent of the U.S. population, is up from some 7 million last week.
Pharmacies, health care providers, and manufacturers voluntarily provide the data, which was previously mandatory to disclose under the since-expired public health emergency.
The data providers have not yet given demographic information, so the government does not have a breakdown by age, the spokeswoman said.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration in September cleared new vaccines from Moderna and Pfizer, and later authorized an updated Novavax shot. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends people aged 6 months and older receive one of the vaccines, regardless of underlying health, previous vaccination, or prior infection.
The two agencies, both part of the HHS, took the steps despite there being no strong data supporting the vaccines. The only clinical data made public has been from Moderna, which tested its new shot in 50 humans. That testing found the new shot induced higher levels of neutralizing antibodies, thought to protect against COVID-19, compared to the last version of Moderna’s vaccine.
HHS officials, despite the lack of data, have repeatedly said the vaccines will protect people and those around them.
“The truth is that these vaccines are safe and effective,” Dr. Peter Marks, a top Food and Drug Administration official, told an event on Oct. 11.
While there are side effects like heart inflammation, “we’ve determined that the benefits overwhelmingly outweigh the risks,” he added later.
While some outside doctors have advised widespread vaccination, others have decried the promotion of the vaccines absent clinical data.
“There is no evidence the booster protects against getting COVID,” Dr. Vinay Prasad, a professor in the University of California, San Francisco’s Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, wrote recently.
He added later: “Randomized trials are necessary to learn the true net effects. Just because the Biden administration is working, hand in hand with Pfizer doesn’t mean we have to accept it. Boycotting an unproven medical product is the only way to get them to runs trials in the future.”
Pfizer has already slashed its outlook for the year, in part because of the lower-than-expected demand. Moderna said it still expects to make $6 to $8 billion on its new vaccine.
Before the new shots were rolled out, the previous round of vaccines, with bivalent formulations, were authorized and recommended in the fall of 2022. They were available for about a year.
Few Americans received one of those shots, according to data the CDC collected through May, when the health emergency ended. According to that data, just 17 percent of Americans, or 56.4 million, received one of the shots.
Many of the recipients were older. Just 0.6 percent of children under 5 received one of the bivalent vaccines, along with 5 percent of children aged 5 to 11, 7.8 percent of children aged 12 to 17, and 7.4 percent of adults aged 18 to 24.
Concern?
Most of the doses of the COVID-19 vaccines administered during the pandemic were purchased by the U.S. government, across the Trump and Biden administrations. The market transitioned to a commercialized one, with private companies paying for some shots, earlier this year.
Still, the government did buy some shots, and has moved to cover others.
The government paid $1.1 billion for what it’s calling the Bridge Access Program, to cover COVID-19 vaccines and treatments for people who do not have health insurance. It also bought 20 million doses of the new vaccines for children under the Vaccines for Children Program, which dates back to 1994.
Of the doses for children, just 800,000 have been shipped, Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, a CDC official, said on Oct. 11.
“We’re working really closely with all components of the supply chain, from manufacturer, distributor, etc., and make sure the vaccine is moving,” he said. “We’re actually doing gangbusters business,” he added later.
The U.S. government has already during the pandemic been forced to discard tens of millions of COVID-19 vaccine doses owing to lack of demand. There are concerns that even with buying vaccines only for children that more will be thrown out.
“9.2 million unused doses would mean >$1.5 billion extra spent on covid vaccines for kids by the US govt,” Dr. Tracy Hoeg, an epidemiologist in California, wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter, reacting to Dr. Daskalakis’s comments.
HHS officials said they planned to keep distributing more doses of the vaccines.
The HHS spokeswoman, asked whether the government was concerned about possible waste, said no.
“We haven’t heard of any concerns about ordering too many” or not enough children getting them, she said.
From The Epoch Times
