Dr. Howard Koh made an appearance on Friday's Boston Public Radio, offering his thoughts on the latest pandemic headlines, and his impressions of the vaccine rollout here in Massachusetts. The Harvard professor and former state commissioner of the Department of Public Health said the missteps here and around the country highlight a broader failure to prioritize public health.
“We’re relying on a public health workforce that’s been exhausted for the past year, trying to implement mask usage and other prevention measures,” he said, in defense of the vaccine rollout in Massachusetts, which has been criticized by many as confusing and inefficient. “Now," he added, "they’re asked to ramp up the most ambitious vaccination effort in U.S. history.”
Massachusetts is currently lagging behind much of the nation on coronavirus vaccination — only about six percent of people have received their first dose. Adding to frustrations, 528,000 of the state's 1 million Moderna and Pfizer doses have yet to make their way into the arms of health care workers, first responders, and the elderly.
Other criticisms have been directed at the state's online vaccine resources, which Koh himself described as "frustrating."
"We need to take a hard look when this is all over, and we’ve gotta really invest strongly in prevention and public health to ensure that this never happens again," Koh said.
Watch: Concerns Linger About Massachusetts' Vaccine Rollout, Despite Governor's Changes
Koh did, however, express some optimism that once the effort ramps up, a strong percentage of Massachusetts residents will opt to get the vaccine, limiting the likelihood of more outbreaks in the months and years to come.
"We’re still very, very early in this,” he said. "And if I can say, as a former state commissioner — we have a proud history of pretty high vaccination rates in our state, so I think when it’s all said and done we are going to be doing very, very well as we’ve done before."
Howard Koh is the former state commissioner of the Department of Public Health, and he served as the assistant secretary of public health under President Obama. He now teaches at Harvard's T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
