CHARLOTTE, N.C. — As COVID-19 numbers continue to break records by the day, the race to get people vaccinated is not going as quickly as health officials planned.
The goal was to have 20 million people vaccinated in the US by the end of 2020, and as of Jan. 10, the CDC reports roughly 7 million have been vaccinated.
Counties across the country are left figuring out the best way to get it done.
In Cabarrus County at the Cabarrus Arena, Sunday was the first day of the appointment only vaccine process after over 1,000 cars showed up for the vaccine event last Wednesday.
Marcella Beam with the Cabarrus Health Alliance said the change was necessary.
“While we were very excited to be able to vaccinate over 1,100 people on Wednesday, we realized that you cannot have folks waiting in the car like that," Beam said. "We didn’t anticipate that extent of a line.”
With a more efficient system came fewer vaccinations, though.
“Today, we have scheduled appointments for 540 to 550 people,” Beam said.
According to the CDC dashboard, North Carolina has administered just over 178,136 of the 649,150 doses they’ve been given as of Jan. 10.
South Carolina is reporting they have administered 99,358 of their roughly 233,200 doses.
President-elect Joe Biden criticized the Trump administration for not doing enough to speed the process.
“The way it's been done has been very, very sad,” Biden said.
The Trump administration has held back millions of doses, but Mark McClellan, a health policy expert with Duke University, said it was part of a strategy.
“They’ve prioritized making sure there are going to be doses available for people to get their follow up shots,” McClellan said.
Biden said he’d like to release all of the doses to start the vaccination process sooner for more Americans.
McClellan said even with more vaccines available, more administers to get vaccines into people’s arms is critical.
“One of the biggest constraints we’re dealing with right now is just bandwidth," McClellan said.
McClellan said the process should start to speed up with time as more funding and more places to administer the vaccine become available