EDITORIAL: Celebrate vaccine distribution successes

There have been the inevitable glitches and a continuing controversy about who should be where in line, but state health officials say they are proud of the overall job the state has done administering the coronavirus vaccine — and rightfully so.

Transporting and distributing the Pfizer and Moderna coronavirus vaccines presented a number of logistical challenges. Both must be kept in cold storage. The vials are shipped in batches, not as individual shots. Unthawed vials have to be given out within a certain amount of time, or they must be thrown away.

Nevada has received more than 740,000 doses. Excluding doses the federal government sent directly to pharmacies, fewer than 1,500 went to waste, documents obtained by the Review-Journal show.

Every wasted vaccine is a cause for concern, obviously. That’s especially true given how effective these vaccines have been in preventing people from getting ill.

Probably the most eye-raising incident happened at Spring Valley Hospital last December. A batch of 1,300 doses arrived unthawed, but the hospital didn’t need that many for its staff. Officials say they were unable to connect with the Southern Nevada Health District to find other organizations that could have used the shots.

The obvious move would have been to give the extra doses to patients at the hospital. At the time, however, state guidance allowed only health care workers to receive the vaccine. Hospital officials worried they could be penalized if they gave out the extra doses. So they were discarded.

This has happened in other places around the country. At the end of December, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo threatened medical organizations with fines and revoked licenses if they gave expiring vaccines to people who weren’t yet eligible. As a result, New York medical offices threw away vaccines. Quite the sequel for the same politician who once sent coronavirus patients into nursing homes.

To their credit, Nevada officials didn’t let that continue to happen here. They allowed medical personnel to distribute doses to those who otherwise wouldn’t have been eligible if the alternative was discarding vaccines. Hundreds of other doses were wasted because of various errors in storage and preparation.

It’s not perfection, but an error rate of around 0.2 percent is worth applauding.

The good news keeps coming, too. The federal government recently approved a third vaccine made by Johnson &Johnson. That vaccine, also called the Janssen vaccine, is a single shot and is stored in a normal refrigerator.

The end of the coronavirus crisis hasn’t arrived yet. But it appears to be rapidly approaching. Give credit to Nevada’s medical personnel and health officials for successfully distributing so many of the state’s vaccines while minimizing waste.