ATLANTA — ATLANTA— With the help of a third vaccine in the United States, the situation is improving, but supply continues to lag behind demand.
Vaccine manufacturers are working around the clock. Alaska is the first state to offer vaccines to everyone 16 and older. In California, Stanford Health Care had to cancel appointments due to a lack of vaccine. The Georgia Department of Public Health website stated that COVID-19 vaccines continue to arrive in extremely limited supply.
The production of any vaccine is monitored more rigorously than just about any other manufacturing process.
“There’s a much higher bar for making sure you’ve done it right,” said Public Health Microbiologist Dr. Amber Schmidtke.
Pfizer and Moderna are using a completely new approach. There are numerous issues to watch and test.
“One thing you want to check for is contamination,” stated Dr. Schmidtke. “You want to make sure you’re not introducing something that could hurt someone.”
Scientists use genetic information extracted from the coronavirus then package it so it can safely teach the body’s immune system to react if it encounters the real thing.
Part of the manufacturing process is making sure the information is good.
“You don’t want to inject something that’s degraded and unlikely to stimulate an immune response,” explained Schmidtke. “The last thing you want is for someone to come away from a vaccine appointment then find out the vaccine was inactive.”
Pharmaceutical companies are looking for ways to accelerate production that includes help from rival companies.