Many health care experts, including those from the Center for Disease Control, last week, acknowledged a grim reality as 2020 came to an end: as COVID numbers continue to escalate, the response has fallen painfully short of expectations.

At one time, President Trump promised 40 million vaccinations by year’s end. By early December the number had been reduced to 20 million. But as the New Year’s ball dropped on an empty Times Square last week, we learned that only two million people had received the vaccination.

And New York is lagging behind other states in distributing the vaccine, Gov. Andrew Cuomo acknowledged on Monday. He estimated that of the 900,000 vaccinations distributed in New York State, only about one-third of them had actually been injected into someone’s arm. He also threatened to impose fines on facilities and health care providers who fail to dispense their current vaccine inventory by the end of the week and, moving forward, must use all of its vaccine allotment within seven days of receipt. Providers who do not comply can be subject to more serious sanctions and fines, including being disqualified from future distribution.

As with other aspects of the COVID battle, such as testing and distribution of supplies, there is no coordinated effort. Individual states are left to their own device, and finger-pointing can often extend among several layers of government and between federal, state and local agencies.

What most of us understand, is that, as new strains of the virus are uncovered, and the number of cases, hospitalizations and deaths continue to increase, our response also needs to accelerate. By now every first responder, medical professional and nursing home resident should have received at least their first vaccination. If drive-in sites like Dutchess Stadium and the Anthony Wayne Recreation Area can’t be utilized for testing, why can the same procedures be implemented for vaccinations, 24 hours a day, seven days a week? It might require a coordinated effort at the federal level to achieve, but it can be done.

And if the temptation may be to wait until the Biden Administration takes office in two weeks to speed up the process, we need to recognize a greater sense of urgency. We need this response sooner, rather than later.