WASHINGTON – The Food and Drug Administration said Wednesday that pharmacists can draw additional doses from vials of the Pfizer coronavirus vaccine, potentially expanding the country’s supply by millions of doses as the Trump administration negotiates with Pfizer to speed up the next round of vaccine deliveries.
The government’s existing supply of the first authorized vaccine can be stretched further after pharmacists began to notice that vials contain more than the expected five doses.
The FDA is in touch with Pfizer about how to handle this issue, the agency said. In the meantime, regulators say those extra doses from a single vial can be used.
OLYMPIA — The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has said that Washington’s COVID-19 vaccine allocation will be reduced next week by 40%, according to Gov. Jay Inslee.
The CDC “has informed us that WA’s vaccine allocation will be cut by 40 percent next week — and that all states are seeing similar cuts,” Inslee wrote in a tweet Thursday morning. “This is disruptive and frustrating.”
Since the Trump administration is involved I’m inclined to suspect intentional fuckery towards blue states, but the article says “States across the country were reporting confusion over reductions,” so maybe it’s just their standard complete incompetence.
Summary: The specs is for each vial to contain five full doses. Because there is inevitably some loss when you draw the shot (usually a bit of liquid is expelled when they expell air bubbles from the syringe, or you can’t get every last drop for some reason), each vial contains “overfill” to make sure that a competent administrator can always get 5 full doses. The FDA has now said that if there is enough left in the vial to provide an additional full dose, you can use it. But they are saying that you should not combine remnants from multiple vials in order to make an dose, so it’s unclear exactly how many additional full doses can be extracted.
The problem is that this actually isn’t good evidence. The study design doesn’t really support lasting effective immunity with one dose because it wasn’t structured that way. Could it work? Yeah, but it’s an awfully big roll of the dice that I don’t think is really necessary.
Doesn’t appear to be a specific number, it has to be safe. Apparently below 60 can cause skin issues if you’re exposed to it for hours on end, so they appear to be pushing it.
It’s not quite that, there’s a good (I dunno, 60-70%? with a huge error bar) chance that it works imo. From a mechanistic point, it makes sense that one dose would do the trick for at least a few months. However, my issue would be saying that the evidence behind that was ‘good’. I don’t think that it is.
To be honest I’m just whining it does not bug me to much. I’m use to working in the cold. Had some outdoor winter jobs in my life and worked on the ice crew in the campus ice rink. Standing on the ice while you clean all that glass will harden you. Long Johns and a jacket and I’m good to go.
I don’t want to drive traffic to 2p2, but it looks like Kentucky found a way to close thier budget shortfall. Their Supreme Court just reversed a decision and reinstated an $870M fine on Poker Stars that could bankrupt the company.
Kentucky was facing a $240M to $540M revenue shortfall in 2021.
I agree and it’s not worth the risk. We also don’t know if a booster shot 3 months later would be as effective as one a month later, so we could fuck it all up.
Options expire 1/15, so we’ll see what happens. The stock I have I plan on holding. I think Moderna is well positioned to be first (or close) on vaccines each time a new threat emerges.