PEMBROKE PARK, Fla. – Gov. Ron DeSantis was preparing for the coronavirus vaccine campaign’s change in pace. Moderna is prepared to ship 367,000 doses of the new vaccine to Florida after the Food and Drug Administration’s authorization.
The Moderna-National Institutes of Health vaccine will be the second FDA-approved coronavirus vaccine after Pfizer-BioNTech. Both vaccines use the same technology and require two doses, but the Moderna vaccine can be stored in a regular freezer.
DeSantis is prioritizing the use of the vaccine at hospitals and long-term care facilities. A Pfizer representative said on Thursday that there aren’t issues with the second week of distribution in Florida.
In Washington, D.C., two senior Trump administration officials who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal planning said states will receive their full allocations, The Associated Press reported.
One official said the initial numbers of available doses that were provided to states were projections based on information from the manufacturers, not fixed allocations. Some state officials may have misunderstood that, the official told The Associated Press.
The two officials also said that changes the federal government made to the delivery schedule, at the request of governors, may be contributing to a mistaken impression that fewer doses are coming. The key change involves spacing out delivery of states’ weekly allocations over several days to make distribution more manageable.
“They will get their weekly allocation, it just won’t come to them on one day,” one official said.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.