Health officials worry nation not ready for COVID-19 vaccine

But health departments that have been underfunded for decades say they currently lack the staff, money and tools to educate people about vaccines and then to distribute, administer and track doses to some 330 million people. Nor do they know when, or if, they’ll get federal aid to do that.

The gaps include figuring out how officials will keep track of who has gotten which doses and how they’ll keep the workers who give the shots safe, with enough protective gear and syringes to do their jobs.

Then there’s the basic question of scale. The federally funded Vaccines for Children program immunizes 40 million children each year. In 2009 and 2010, the CDC scaled up to vaccinate 81 million people against pandemic H1N1 influenza. And last winter, the country distributed 175 million vaccines for the seasonal influenza vaccine, according to the CDC.

Many health officials say they feel burned by the country’s struggle to provide hospitals with ventilators last spring, when states found themselves bidding against one another for a limited supply. Those concerns are amplified by the continuing difficulties providing enough testing kits; supplying health workers with personal protective equipment; allocating drugs such as remdesivir; and recruiting contact tracers - who track down everyone with whom people diagnosed with COVID-19 have been in contact.