In Tennessee and North Carolina, the demand for COVID-19 vaccines has dropped so much that they are returning millions of doses to the national government, despite the fact that less than half of their population has been vaccinated.
Mississippi, the least vaccinated state in the country, is shifting some of its stock to Maine, one of the states with the highest immunization rates. In all states, health authorities are struggling to use their doses before they expire.
The United States has a growing vaccine surplus, with near expiration dates and low demand, while the developing world is clamoring for more doses to contain new outbreaks of the virus.
Sometimes millionaire prizes, free beer and marijuana, raffles for hunting rifles and other incentives fail to erase the doubts of many who have decided not to get vaccinated, raising concerns that sooner or later there will be new outbreaks.
Week after week the number of accumulated doses increases. Oklahoma has 800,000 and vaccinates only 4,500 people a day. It also has 27,000 doses of Pfizer and Moderna vaccines that will expire at the end of the month.
Millions of doses of Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine were set to expire at the end of the month before the government extended its expiration date another six weeks, but some officials say it will be difficult to use all of them by the time that new deadline expires.
“We cannot allow the doses to expire. It would be unacceptable, given the need to get vaccinated in some communities and the enormous inequality in the distribution of vaccines worldwide, “said Dr. Kirsten Bibbind-Domingo, director of epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of California (San Francisco).
The United States recorded an average of 870,000 daily vaccinations at the end of last week, a figure well below the 3.3 million daily in mid-April, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (known as the CDC, for its acronym in English).
President Joe Biden wants 70% of America’s adult population to have at least one vaccine by July 4. But that goal may not be met. As of Friday, 64% of the population over 18 years of age had been vaccinated, according to the CDC.
Some states, especially those in the Northeast, have already vaccinated 70% of adults, while places like Mississippi and Alabama are nowhere near that number.
The government said it plans to share 80 million doses with other countries by the end of June and buy an additional 500 million of the Pfizer vaccine to donate to the 92 lowest-income countries and the African Union next year.
Maine and Rhode Island, two states with high demand for vaccines, received 32,400 doses from Mississippi, where only 35% of the population received the first dose. Mississippi returned another 800,000 doses to the central government. The demand for vaccines fell substantially compared to December and this week only 14,000 doses were applied.
Those who don’t want to get vaccinated include Benjamin Schlink of Pearl, Mississippi, who says he feels healthy enough to resist the virus.
“I do not worry, everything is in the hands of God,” he said. “If God wants you to be infected, you will be infected.”
Gayle Charnley, 69, said some neighbors tell her she should get vaccinated, but she doesn’t plan to. “They force people to get vaccinated as quickly as possible, when we don’t know the long-term effect of the vaccine,” he said.
Hundreds of millions of doses have been applied globally, with strict controls, and the risks appear to be minimal.
Demand is particularly low for J & J’s vaccine, which requires only one dose, is easy to store, and looked very promising. However, its association with possible blood clots and contamination in a Baltimore laboratory generated a lot of resistance.
Bibbins-Domingo said that with many parts of the world desperate for fixes, the United States has a moral duty not to waste the J&J formula, which is particularly useful in remote areas, among the homeless and in rural communities.
“You have to make sure that those doses get to the people who need them,” he said.
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Associated Press reporters from around the country contributed to this report.
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