Of course the worst looking state on this map is the one relaxing the quickest. Why would this pandemic year go any different than it has before? More on this later..
Biden is now saying we will have enough supply for all adults in May. I kinda like how he is setting expectations low and slowly raising them. It is a good change of pace from last year. Personally I think we will have enough supply for all adults that want the vaccine by late April. The main question is if we will have the vaccinators to provide those doses.
We are going to have enough doses for 130 million people by end of March. Then about enough for 200-220 million people by end of April (assuming neither Novavax or AstraZeneca get EUAs before the end of April). By the end of May, we are going to be looking at enough doses to vaccinate 300+ million people.
In other news..
Merck and Johnson and Johnson have finalized a partnership on manufacturing the J&J coronavirus vaccine as was previously hinted at in late January after Merck's own vaccine efforts failed. Merck will lend two of its plants to the effort as part of Biden's invocation of the Defense Production Act. The government is giving Merck $105 million to retrofit their manufacturing for the vaccine. As well, the Administration is helping increase production of vaccine manufacturing supplies.
It isn't clear to me though how fast this process will augment the supply timeline. It will take a few months alone for the Adenovirus batches. Even more time for purity testing. And of course time for the retrofitting of the facilities to begin with. As a point of comparison, Sanofi's retooling for Pfizer's vaccine is expected to take about 6 months. Vaccine manufacturing unfortunately isn't something that can be scaled up overnight. This is something the Trump Administration should have been assisting with last year.
And finally..
While I'm fairly optimistic about the pandemic, my god, Republicans sure like to push our luck.
Texas is ending its state mask mandate, allowing all businesses to fully open, and rescinding most pandemic executive orders next Wednesday to be "100%" open.
It only has 6% of its population fully vaccinated, near the bottom in the nation. The UK variant is about 25% of the variants in the state at the moment. Houston is the first city in the US that has detected all the new variants. Just incredibly dumb when we are so close to the end of the tunnel.