NY doctor on 100 million doses in 100 days

The ambitious plan to vaccinate 100 million Americans against the coronavirus in the next 100 days has the potential to be accomplished according to Dr. Mathew Devine, the Medical Director at Highland Family Medicine.

ROCHESTER, N.Y. (WROC) — The ambitious plan to vaccinate 100 million Americans against the coronavirus in the next 100 days has the potential to be accomplished according to Dr. Mathew Devine, the Medical Director at Highland Family Medicine.

Dr. Devine addressed the Biden administration's COVID blueprint. "I think we can get there," he said. "I think the aggressiveness of this has really prompted us to speed up and move along with our production. The Biden group—the day after their election—started working on a 200-page document that they recently released that has seven aims of areas to help us in this fight against coronavirus."

Dr. Devine listed the seven key areas of priority for the Biden team:

1. Restore trust with the American people
2. Mount a safe, effective, and comprehensive vaccination campaign
3. Mitigate spread through expanding masking, testing, data, treatments, health care workforce, and clear public health standards
4. Immediately expand emergency relief and exercise the Defense Production Act
5. Safely reopen schools, businesses, and travel while protecting workers
6. Protect those most at risk and advance equity, including across racial, ethnic, and rural/urban lines
7. Restore U.S. leadership globally and build better preparedness for future threats

"Keep in mind the vaccine has only been approved now for a little over a month," noted Dr. Devine. "We've been working on different sectors - our health care workers and our essential workers - and now those who are over 65. So really this entails ramping up vaccine clinics across the country. So getting to a million doses per day is actually the things that we've already almost reached in the recent days, but obviously, we have to do that every single day over 100 days. Getting there is going to be a full-fledged effort and, of course, it does depend on the supply of the vaccine that we have."

With regard to getting vaccines to as many Americans as possible, Dr. Devine listed some of the key factors that will make up a multi-faceted approach to the goal:

• Ensure the availability of safe, effective vaccines for the American public
• Accelerate getting shots into arms and get vaccines to the communities that need them most
• Create as many venues as needed for people to be vaccinated
• Focus on hard-to-reach and high-risk populations
• Fairly compensate providers and state and local governments for the cost of administering vaccinations
• Drive equity throughout the vaccination campaign and broader pandemic response
• Launch a national vaccinations public education campaign
• Bolster data systems and transparency for vaccinations
• Monitor vaccine safety and efficacy
• Spur the health care workforce to support the vaccination effort

"I think there's still a lot of concern out there about the first dose versus even second dose side effects," Dr. Devine said. "I'm a living example that it's okay. You're not going to have any significant problems. Those problems are really less than 2% which is a very, very small number. Even those 2% have a very, very small side effect to the medication or vaccine."