‘Frustration and Stress’: State Officials Fault Rollout of Monkeypox Vaccine - The New York Times

Federal officials are not relying on an established system to distribute the vaccine, slowing immunizations and burdening local health departments, critics say.

Roughly 5,000 doses of monkeypox vaccine intended for Fort Lauderdale, Fla., left the national stockpile’s warehouse in Olive Branch, Miss., on July 19.

The federal government’s distribution of monkeypox vaccine has been blemished by missteps and confusion, burdening local officials and slowing the pace of immunizations even as the virus spreads, according to interviews with state health officials and documents obtained by The New York Times.

“This is happening everywhere,” said Claire Hannan, executive director of the Association of Immunization Managers, a nonprofit group that represents state, local and territorial officials.

That system, called VTrckS (pronounced “vee-tracks”), routinely moves billions of vaccine doses for annual immunizations and, importantly, is integrated with state databases that track vaccinations and doses.

But Jynneos is being disbursed from the National Strategic Stockpile by a different government agency under the Department of Health and Human Services.

Instead, the stockpile was designed to deliver massive amounts of vaccine to each state in response to a catastrophic event, according to a federal official with knowledge of the stockpile’s operations.

“If it was a smallpox response, they’re not going to be sitting in their offices ordering vaccine,” the official said of state health authorities?

As it stands now, the stockpile is shipping monkeypox vaccine to just five sites in each state, regardless of its size.

Jynneos vaccine is most commonly used to prevent monkeypox infections, and consists of two doses given four weeks apart.

“We had no way to track vaccine shipments, when they actually shipped or when they were going to arrive,” Chris Van Deusen, director of media relations at the Texas Department of State Health Services, said in an email.

said that of more than 1,100 deliveries of Jynneos, “only a minuscule number of shipments have experienced issues.” The stockpile “has not experienced any loss of Jynneos vaccine in transit for any reason, including temperature excursions,” the statement said.

The delivery flaws threaten to aggravate tensions between federal health officials and their state counterparts.

But allegations that states are not requesting all their available vaccine doses or are shirking their responsibilities don’t tell the whole story, some officials said.

In the past, “we have literally done nothing except basically hit an approve button,” said Kathryn Turner, the deputy state epidemiologist of Idaho and secretary and treasurer for the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists.

“We have the systems in place,” said Jeremy Redfern, a spokesman for the Florida Department of Health.

considered several options for delivering the vaccine from the national stockpile, but other systems “could not be implemented on the timeline needed for distribution of Jynneos,” the department said in its statement.

Federal officials have allocated 1.1 million doses of Jynneos to states and have said they shipped about 600,000 of those.

Anne Zink, Alaska’s chief medical officer and the president-elect of the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials.

Some state officials said they resented the suggestion by the federal government that they were slowing the country’s response by withholding monkeypox data from federal agencies.

Hahn said state officials told the agency, “you throw new systems at us and then say, ‘Boy, the states aren’t sharing the data.’”.

In an email to The Times, California’s health department said: “To date, there have been no issues with ordering and receipt of the monkeypox medical countermeasures.”.

But in calls with federal agencies and with the Association of Immunization Managers, health officials in California, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, Minnesota, Connecticut, Illinois and Indiana have all voiced frustration with federal handling of the vaccine.

“Everyone expressed frustration” that VTrckS was not given more consideration, read the notes from a call between state and federal officials on July 20, and they “made it clear that all states would rather go that route A.S.A.P.”.

H.H.S.’s new solution — the ordering system introduced last week — is still far from ideal, some state officials said.

“The processes for monkeypox and Covid-19, then, have states using multiple systems,” said Ken Gordon, a spokesman for Ohio’s department of health

But state officials said that they had no idea that vaccine delivery from the national stockpile would also be changing, and that the C.D.C.’s system would no longer be used