MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO / AP) – Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz says he may be hiccuped early, but the state is not getting as much COVID-19 vaccine as promised.
Walz made the comments in an interview with WCCO Radio on Friday morning. As several governors across the country have expressed concern over the reduction in vaccine allocation.
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According to Walz, state officials were reluctant to release an unofficial number of planned vaccine doses, which they released last week. The numbers have really changed.
“I got about 40 percent less,” Walz said.
Walz says the federal government needs to make sure the vaccine reaches every state, as promised.
“It simply came to our notice then. I certainly hope so. But it doesn’t encourage me when Pfizer says it has vaccines in a warehouse, “Walz said. “It simply came to our notice then. We are ready.”
The first doses of the vaccine began to be administered in the state earlier this week.
Several states were notified by the federal government this week that they will receive a smaller amount of vaccine in the second week, which for Minnesota will now include 33,150 doses instead of the initial projection of 58,000 doses.
“These projections, we have been told, can change quickly and that is why we want the public to recognize that when things change, it is not unexpected,” Kris Ehresmann, director of infectious diseases, said during a session. since Friday. “This is just an incredibly quick situation.”
Two senior Trump administration officials told the Associated Press on Thursday that disagreements over changes to the vaccine supply and distribution schedule could have contributed to fluctuations in the number of shipments. The initial numbers were projections based on information from the manufacturers. Remote delivery schedules of weekly deliveries over several days, at the request of governors to facilitate distribution, could have led to confusion about the total number of doses received, officials said.
Federal Warp Speed officials said Pfizer had made 6.4 million doses of the vaccine available and expected to deliver 2.9 million doses in the first week after approval. Another 2.9 million are to be kept as a second dose for first-time recipients to ensure the full effectiveness of the vaccine, while the remaining 500,000 are set aside as emergency doses in case of problems.
Pfizer said the company had no production problems.
Minnesota is expected to receive the remaining full delivery from the first week, 46,800, by the end of Friday. Ehresmann said 947 health workers across the state have been vaccinated since Friday afternoon, and the state will have access to 94,900 doses of the Modern vaccine after its approval, which is expected imminently.
Minnesota health officials reported 2,737 confirmed cases of coronavirus and 65 deaths on Friday, bringing the state’s total to 391,889 cases and 4,723 deaths since the beginning of the pandemic.
The seven-day average of new daily cases in Minnesota has dropped in the past two weeks, from 6,331.86 new cases per day on December 3 to 3,136.14 new cases per day on December 17, according to The COVID Tracking Project. The number of new daily cases has also fallen in recent weeks, following the explosive rise in cases at the end of last month.
Meanwhile, several restaurants and bars in Minnesota are defying Governor Tim Walz’s executive order to ban domestic services at these institutions to help mitigate community transmission of COVID-19. The companies – some of whom are being sued by Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison for ignoring the order – face 60-day suspensions of their beverage licenses and thousands of dollars in fines.
Minnesota Health Commissioner Jan Malcolm said that while the increase in the number of cases has declined across the state, it is premature to allow home services to units known to contribute to community outreach.
“We also know that we need to see two solid weeks of this kind of decline, to make sure that this is indeed a valid decline and not an artifact of numbers that is slow to appear,” Malcolm told reporters. “We may seem extremely cautious, but I think this is because experience has taught us that it is wise to really look at this data over a period of time and pay attention to where it seems. to be at that peak ”.
(© Copyright 2020 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All rights reserved. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)