The federal government must build working
IT systems to manage COVID-19 vaccines and share real-time data on supply and immunizations, say technology and health experts.
Under-resourced states and localities didn’t receive the tech they needed from the Trump administration to support vaccine rollout, according to current and former federal and state officials. States expected the federal government to provide at least one functional system for distribution, scheduling and reporting they could use. But, the officials say there’s still time to develop such a system given the uneven vaccine rollout nationwide.
Federal agencies also withheld “a lot” of data on the pandemic prior to the 2020 presidential election, said Ryan Panchadsaram, a board member for COVID Act Now, a nonprofit formed to make more pandemic data public. Most federal data products were developed for internal use by agencies as they sorted out their response to the pandemic, said Panchadsaram,
There is a very high demand for people to get vaccinated for the coronavirus. Newsy's Lindsey Theis explains how this is affecting residents all over the country.
January 15, 2021
The demand is high for a COVID vaccine, and the logistics behind getting a coveted appointment is leaving many frustrated and empty handed.
SHOW TRANSCRIPT
The demand is high for a COVID vaccine, and the logistics behind getting a coveted appointment are leaving many frustrated and empty-handed. Every time we picked a location, there was no appointments available at any location, Anna Duncan told Newsy.
Duncan and her sister each spent four hours trying to get a vaccine appointment for their 91-year-old mother, who lives in Washington, D.C., with no luck. I happened to be in Florida, and my sister s in Arlington, Virginia. My sister and I each saw one appointment and we immediately grabbed it. But by the time we had entered the capture code, it said, sorry, that appointment s no longer available.