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Thousands of vaccine appointments have gone unfilled in the last week, leading local health officials to urge opening COVID-19 vaccinations to people age 55 and older. Clark County’s two mass vaccination sites, as well as smaller sites, are operating well below capacity, Southern Nevada Health District chief health officer Dr. Fermin Leguen said Monday. “We really are struggling right now to fill our vaccination sites,” Leguen said. Both mass vaccination sites are capable of administering about 4,000 doses per day. However, Leguen said recently the Cashman Center has been administering less than 2,500 per day, and the Las Vegas Convention Center is rarely breaking 3,000. (Scott Davidson and Hynes, 3/9)

Pasadena officials on Tuesday canceled a COVID-19 vaccination clinic for senior citizens, grocery store employees and other essential workers after hundreds of people who were not eligible for the shots signed up for appointments. People who did not yet qualify for the vaccine under state guidelines claimed about 900 of the 1,500 slots at a clinic that was designed for people older than 65 and essential workers who live or work in Pasadena, city spokeswoman Lisa Derderian said. Many of the appointments were booked by people who worked in the media and in Hollywood, Derderian said, including at production companies, streaming TV services and news outlets and on the sets of soap operas. (Nelson, 3/9)

Three months after Gov. Ron DeSantis announced that seniors were his top priority in the coronavirus vaccine rollout, about 1.8 million of the state’s residents 65 and older still hadn’t been vaccinated as of Monday. DeSantis is expanding vaccination eligibility next week to anyone 60 or older, adding another 1.4 million people to those vying with seniors for the often hard-to-get vaccine appointments. Health care workers, people of any age with underlying conditions and firefighters, teachers and law enforcement officers 50 and older also are eligible. (LeFever, 3/10)

As Johnson & Johnson’s single-dose vaccine continues to be disseminated to combat COVID-19, Maryland has given out more doses of the latest inoculation than any other state, according to the most recent vaccination update from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (Ruiz, 3/9)

Elderly Oregonians who tried to sign up for COVID-19 vaccinations at some local pharmacies this week learned they are no longer eligible for appointments because of new national guidance from the White House that prioritizes teachers. But Oregon already prioritized teachers, authorizing vaccinations Jan. 25 even as seniors were forced to wait until Feb. 8 through March 1 for their turns. Oregon is now significantly behind states like California and Washington in its rate of vaccinations among seniors. (Goldberg, 3/9)

“One key advantage here is that these organizations are inviting in their own patients. These patients have built up trust with their doctor and nurses over years. They are now listening to the people they trust most to give them advice about the vaccine,” Philadelphia Health Commissioner Thomas Farley said last month, describing the centers as “a key part of our racial equity strategy.” The strategy seems to be working. As of Feb. 28, nearly two-thirds of the 15,863 vaccines administered by private, nonprofit health centers had gone to African Americans, Hispanics, and Asians. For the city as a whole, 54% of doses have gone to whites, and only a third to those three groups. (The remainder include people whose racial identity is not known or is listed as “other.”) (Brubaker, 3/10)

Among the more than half a million Utahns who have received at least one dose of COVID-19 vaccine, 154 people had bad reactions that have been reported to a federal database. The reporting includes the deaths of four Utahns after they got a shot. Health experts caution that a person dying shortly after being inoculated does not mean vaccine caused that person’s death. Federal health officials say they found “no evidence that vaccination contributed to patient deaths” in the cases reported to the database after COVID-19 inoculations. (Means, 3/10)

Acute allergic reactions occurred in 2.10% but anaphylaxis in only 0.025% of employees of two Boston hospitals who received their first dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna COVID-19 vaccine, according to a research letter published yesterday in JAMA. Scientists from Massachusetts General Hospital and Brigham and Women's Hospital administered email, text, phone, and smartphone app survey links to 64,900 employees who received a dose of one of the two mRNA coronavirus vaccines from Dec 16, 2020, to Feb 12, 2021. (Van Beusekom, 3/9)

KHN: Pfizer’s Newest Vaccine Plant Has Persistent Mold Issues, History Of Recalls 

Pfizer’s management knew last year there was “a mold issue” at the Kansas facility now slated to produce the drugmaker’s urgently needed covid-19 vaccine, according to a Food and Drug Administration inspection report. The McPherson, Kansas, facility, which FDA inspectors wrote is the nation’s largest manufacturer of sterile injectable controlled substances, has a long, troubled history. Nearly a decade’s worth of FDA inspection reports, recalls and reprimands reviewed by KHN show the facility as a repeat offender. FDA investigators have repeatedly noted in reports that the plant has failed to control quality and contamination or fully investigate after production failures. (Tribble, 3/10)