MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO / AP) – Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz says it could be an early hiccup, but the state is not getting as much vaccine against COVID-19 as promised.
Walz made the comments in an interview with WCCO Radio on Friday morning. It occurs when several governors across the country expressed their concerns after reducing the allocation of vaccines.
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According to Walz, state officials were hesitant to release an unofficial number of expected doses of vaccine, which they released last week. In fact, the numbers changed.
“We have about 40 percent less,” Walz said.
Walz says the federal government must ensure that the vaccine reaches all states as promised.
“It simply came to our notice then. I definitely hope so. But I’m not encouraged when Pfizer says he has vaccines in a warehouse, “Walz said.” These have to come out. We’re ready. “
The first doses of vaccine began being administered to the state earlier this week.
The federal government this week notified several states that they will receive a minor vaccine supply in the second week, which for Minnesota will now include 33,150 doses instead of the initial projection of 58,000 doses.
“We’ve been told that these projections can change quickly and that’s why we want the public to recognize that when things change, that’s not unexpected,” infectious disease state director Kris Ehresmann said during a briefing on Friday. “This is just an incredibly fast situation.”
Two senior Trump administration officials told The Associated Press on Thursday that misunderstandings about changes in the vaccine supply and distribution schedule may have contributed to fluctuations in the number of shipments. The initial numbers were projections based on information from the manufacturers. Spaced delivery schedules of weekly shipments for several days at the request of governors to facilitate distribution may have caused confusion about the number of total doses arriving, officials said.
Federal officials in Operation Warp Speed said Pfizer made 6.4 million doses of the vaccine available and expected to distribute 2.9 million doses in the first week after approval. Another 2.9 million will be maintained as a second dose for recipients of the first dose to ensure the full effectiveness of the vaccine, while the remaining 500,000 will be set aside as a contingency dose in case of problems.
Pfizer has said the company has not experienced production issues.
Minnesota is expected to receive the rest of the total of 46,800 shipments during the first week by the end of Friday. Ehresmann said 947 health workers across the state have been vaccinated as of 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 total to 391,889 cases and 4,723 deaths since the pandemic began.
The seven-day average of daily new cases in Minnesota fell in the past two weeks, from 6,331.86 new cases a day on December 3 to 3,136.14 new cases a day on December 17, according to The COVID Tracking Project . The number of new daily cases has also declined in recent weeks following the explosive growth of cases late last month.
Meanwhile, several Minnesota restaurants and bars are challenging Governor Tim Walz’s executive order to ban domestic service in those establishments 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 a 60-day suspension of their liquor licenses and fines of thousands of dollars.
Minnesota Health Commissioner Jan Malcolm said that while the increase in cases has been declining across the state, it is premature to allow domestic service in well-known establishments to contribute to the spread of the community.
“We also know we need to see two solid weeks of this kind of decline to make sure this is really a valid decline and not an artifact of the figures that are slow to come,” Malcolm told reporters. “We may seem extremely cautious, but I think this is because experience has taught us that it is advisable to really look at this data over a period of time and consider where that turning point seems to be.”
(© Copyright 2020 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All rights reserved. Associated Press contributed to this report).