John Yang:

When federal health officials approved a new COVID booster earlier this month and recommended it for anyone six months or older, doses were expected to be available in pharmacies within days. But two weeks later, many people are having trouble finding the vaccine. And if they do find it, some are having trouble getting insurance to pay for it. And some nursing homes, which are more vulnerable to COVID, haven't even begun vaccinating residents yet and may not until November.

Katelyn Jetelina is a University of Texas epidemiologist and author of the popular newsletter Your Local Epidemiologist. Katelyn, why is the rollout of this new booster a little messier than the previous rollouts?

Katelyn Jetelina, Author, "Your Local Epidemiologist": Yeah, it's been messy, to say the least, like you said. And this is because of a massive shift coming out of the emergency that COVID-19 vaccines are now commercial.

So in other words, the U.S. government is no longer responsible for purchasing or distributing these vaccines. So this means we have now multiple payers i.e. Insurance companies and changes to the delivery system, which has unfortunately resulted in this slow rollout and fragmented inequitable and, quite frankly, imperfect system.

General Perna was in charge of it during the pandemic. He was the chief operation officer of Operation Work Speed. And I think a lot of people underappreciate, including me, the massive task of getting 330,000,000 people a vaccine quickly. I think it was 24 hours after the initial rollout in December of 2020, and it saved lives.

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