But there was early debate about how loosely to define who qualified for shots, mixed with surprise that sizable numbers of hospital workers were hesitant to be among the first to have them injected. Willing doctors and nurses who didn’t work for hospitals were often left to scramble for shots, such as Dr. Inbar Kirson, whose Northbrook practice includes COVID testing.
She said five health departments told her she’d wait a month or more. Then she caught a Dec. 30 social media post of a friend, a funeral director, who’d gotten his shot at an Orland Park Jewel-Osco. He gave her the web link to make an appointment. She trekked 2½ hours down and back the next day for her first shot. Others in health care are still waiting.
Unlike with other parts of the vaccination program, the federal government set up a special partnership with pharmacies, mainly Walgreens and CVS, to directly visit long-term facilities in each state. But there were notable delays, particularly in Illinois, with the pharmacies and the state blaming each other. Some of the batches of shots sat unused.
By Jan. 8, however, when CDC first published state-by-state data, Illinois’ rankings appeared in the middle tier of states: 30th in the rate of doses administered, per resident, and 25th in the percent of its shots that had been delivered into arms. Then other states got better, faster, than Illinois.
It’s unclear exactly just why Illinois couldn’t keep pace. But officials offer some possibilities.
- Bittner, the Pritzker spokeswoman, suggested one reason was because the state waited a week later to expand vaccinations to the 1b group, and states that had done it sooner were able to boost their numbers quicker.
- Another suspected reason: the continued troubles in the long-term care vaccination process, which affected Illinois more than most states.
- Illinois doesn’t expect its first shots to get into all willing arms in long-term care until Feb. 15. But the state did announce Wednesday that it will take surplus shots in the federal program and use them for others.
- As the city and state roll out vaccinations to more clinics, those clinics are doing shots fast enough but struggling to record them quickly enough in the state’s dataset.
“In some cases, there’s an issue of providers not using their vaccines,” Arwardy said. “But still, in terms of some of that tech reporting, it’s not fully there.”
From the Feds to Illinois – Supply chain
That leaves one more, obvious possibility: It’s simply taking providers longer to put shots into arms in Illinois than elsewhere. Understanding that requires a look at the supply chain to determine the holdups. A supply chain, like most cases, that is largely hidden from public view.
Logistics experts say the goal should be for providers to use up all their vaccine within the week of receiving it and, in places with built-up surplus, to eat into that too at the same time. That is the city’s goal, too, but recognizing the challenges of the work, Chicago sets a minimum goal of 85%. Even that can be a struggle.
A state spokeswoman did not respond to a question about why the state wouldn’t provide the detailed information of the supply chain. But on Monday the state did release some data that looks at the problem a different way, by snapshots of inventory at the county level. By comparing that with the average number of shots injected in each place in a day, the figures can show how many days’ supplies are on hand.
Taking out long-term care shots, the data shows a statewide average of about a six-day supply, based on how quickly shots are being injected. But there are wide variations, particularly with concerns there won’t be enough second shots coming to cover those given first doses.