With the development of a coronavirus vaccine nearing its final stages, public health departments across the U.S. are hastily preparing to distribute it — even though they don’t know when it will be approved or which ones will ultimately get cleared by the FDA.
But there’s even more pressing and less certain issue for state leaders: How they’re going to pay for it.
Every state has submitted a draft plan on how they will distribute a coronavirus vaccine once it’s given authorization from the federal government. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which is in the process of reviewing those blueprints, told states to be ready to distribute a vaccine by Nov. 1 — an enormous undertaking especially given the fact that a vaccine hasn’t been approved by the Food and Drug Administration.
