239 - VACCINE WEEK: Maine's Top Health Officer Dr. Nirav Shah on the Complicated Logistics of Vaccine Distribution
Public Health On Call
The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
4.6 • 644 Ratings
🗓️ 25 January 2021
⏱️ 15 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Why is it so hard to get vaccines to people who need them? Maine's CDC Director Dr. Nirav Shah talks to Stephanie Desmon about the massive logistical challenges with COVID-19 vaccines: identification of groups, notification to let groups know when it's their turn, and then actually registering, scheduling, and vaccinating people with two doses—all while not being able to anticipate supply more than one week out. They also talk about the troubling realities of vaccine hesitation which may not be as visible right now with demand far outpacing supply.
KEYWORDS: supply chain; policy
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to Season 3, a Public Health On Call, a podcast from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. |
| 0:12.3 | I'm Josh Sharfstein, Vice Dean for Public Health Practice and Community Engagement, and a former secretary of Maryland's Health Department. |
| 0:19.6 | Our goal is to bring scientific evidence |
| 0:22.4 | and experience to the public health news of the day through informative interviews with scientists, |
| 0:27.8 | community leaders, policy experts, public health officials, clinicians, and more. If you have ideas |
| 0:34.4 | or questions for us to cover, please email us at public health question |
| 0:38.7 | at jhhhu.edu. |
| 0:41.1 | That's public health question at jhhu.edu for future podcast episodes. |
| 0:47.2 | Today, Stephanie Desmond talks to Dr. Nirov Shah, the top health officer in Maine. |
| 0:52.8 | They dig into the logistics of vaccine distribution |
| 0:55.9 | and the challenges associated with this major public health endeavor. Let's listen. |
| 1:01.7 | Nirov Shah, thanks for joining me. |
| 1:03.6 | Thank you for having me. It's an honor to be here. |
| 1:05.8 | Today we're going to talk about the logistics of distributing a COVID vaccine. We were able to get the science of creating a |
| 1:14.0 | vaccine to create a vaccine in record time. But now we're faced with this dilemma of how to get |
| 1:19.4 | the shots to the people who need them. Why is it so hard to do something like this? Well, |
| 1:26.6 | there are a few reasons which I look forward to going into in more detail. |
| 1:31.1 | What I will share is the way that we are approaching the logistical piece at a very, very high |
| 1:36.1 | level. |
| 1:37.2 | And as we think about it from a patient journey perspective, we think of three distinct things |
| 1:42.9 | that need to happen, buckets that need to be understood and well executed upon. |
| 1:47.9 | The first is identification. |
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