Some hospitals run out of COVID-19 vaccines and cancel thousands of appointments

Hospitals across the country have had to start

canceling thousands of appointments

to provide the COVID-19 vaccine in the face

of dose shortages

, causing health officials to despair.

The situation is especially dire in

Texas

, which has more than 2 million cases, according to data from our sister network NBC News.

This while the country has already exceeded 25 million infections and more than 416,000 deaths.

The Houston hospital system run by Dr. Esmaeil Porsa, Harris Health, is one that is running out of vaccines.

[Follow our coverage of the coronavirus pandemic]

The center, which serves thousands of patients, mostly without health insurance, could run out of vaccine supplies as early as this Saturday at noon, Porsa warned The New York Times.

According to the doctor, the problem has to do with the availability of the vaccine:

the vaccines are not arriving due to a distribution problem

.

Nurse Adele Prieto (left) receives her second dose of the COVID-19 vaccine from Lesia Turner at the Dallas County Mass Vaccination Center in Fair Park, Wednesday, Jan.20, 2021, in Dallas. AP / LM Otero

"Suddenly,

the vaccine distribution stopped,

" said the doctor.

But this is not just the case in Texas.

In San Francisco,

California

, the Health Department planned to run out of vaccines this week because officials had to temporarily suspend thousands of doses after reporting a higher than usual number of allergic reactions, according to the quoted outlet.

"I think this is really a continuation of the consequences of the

lack of a coordinated federal response

. Basically, the cities and counties were left alone to face this pandemic," said Dr. Grant Colfax, head of the Department. of Public Health of San Francisco.

[The variant of the coronavirus detected in the UK may be more deadly.

And others worry]

In

New York State

, some clinics temporarily delayed or closed vaccination programs because they

received fewer vaccines than they expected.

In downtown Oneida, Oneida County Executive, Republican Anthony J. Picente Jr., said Friday he was frustrated at being forced to temporarily close two county-run vaccination centers.

"It is outrageous, it is a shame and it is clearly not the way in which this pandemic should be managed," said Picente at a press conference in front of a sign that said "closed."

Gov. Andrew Cuomo said New York has been administering an average of 80,000 doses a day - not counting vaccines delivered to nursing homes.

[The time interval between the first and second doses of the vaccine does not have to be exact, according to experts]

At that rate, it would take months to vaccinate the more than 7 million people who can currently receive the vaccines in the state.

The big unanswered question is whether pharmaceutical companies will be able to increase production.

In

South Carolina

, a hospital in the city of Beaufort had to

cancel 6,000 vaccination appointments

after receiving just 450 of the doses it expected.

In

Hawaii

, a Maui hospital

canceled 5,000 appointments

for the first dose and put another 15,000 appointment requests on hold.

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As of Saturday, more than

41 million doses

of the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines

had been distributed 

to state and local governments, but

only about 20.5 million

doses

had been administered

to patients, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. of Diseases.

CDC relaxes vaccination requirements

Given the shortage of supplies and obstacles to its distribution, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC, for its acronym in English) have modified their recommendations for vaccination against the coronavirus.

In this way, they seek to allow patients to use one of the two approved vaccine in the first dose, and the other in the second dose.

The country's main health authority established the new guideline despite the fact that such a change has not been studied in clinical trials.

The change in recommendations will give more flexibility to the delayed vaccination campaign, at a time when incoming president Joe Biden launched an ambitious plan to supply 100 million vaccines in its first 100 days.

With information from AP, Efe and The New York Times.