COVID-19 vaccine doses have been delivered but are sitting on pharmacy shelves. Longer delays could prolong the pandemic

If the pace of COVID-19 vaccine delivery into people's arms stays the way it has been for the past few weeks, it could take years rather than months to vaccinate Americans, and the outbreak will continue to dominate lives.

Federal officials overestimated the speed at which vaccines could be given, making delivery a disappointment in an otherwise successful vaccine development effort.

Doses have been distributed behind the government's initial schedule – 15 million, instead of the 20 million doses promised to be delivered by the end of 2020. About 70% of those doses are sitting on pharmacy shelves, according to government data, and only about 14% of doses destined for nursing home residents and caregivers have been injected.

Although vaccination is off to a rough start, it's not too late to turn the situation around, according to experts such as Kelly Moore, deputy director of the Immunization Action Coalition, an education and advocacy group.

To do so will require a host of improvements, including more money, additional staffing and greater experience with vaccines that have been shown to be safe and effective but not so easy to use.

About 200,000 doses are being given a day. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said vaccinators should soon be able to deliver 1 million a day.

"There were a lot of aspirational goals set by federal officials about how many vaccines could be delivered how quickly," Moore said. "The delivery of a box of vaccine to a clinic door is the easiest part of the process."

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