SALT LAKE CITY – More than 20,000 doses of COVID-19 vaccine had been administered in Utah by health officials Tuesday, just 20% of the amount of vaccine that had been sent to the state.
“There are a lot of things to do to get a vaccine,” said Jenny Johnson, a spokeswoman for the Utah Department of Health. “It’s no surprise that people see a number sent to Utah and think that means we should vaccinate 100,000 people as soon as we get the vaccine. And that’s not how it works.”
Numbers released Tuesday showed that Pfizer and Moderna had shipped 102,025 combined doses of the vaccine to Utah since the launch began, and 20,417 of those doses have been given to health workers and others included in Phase 1 of the state distribution plan.
“People just need to know that there’s a time lag from the time it’s sent until it gets into someone’s arm,” Johnson said. “But we administer vaccines to people.”
Johnson said that when the state reports the number of “shipped” doses, it does not necessarily mean they are in the state yet. The difference between the doses delivered to the doses administered is up to seven days, he said. There is also a 24-hour window to report that the vaccine has been administered, which adds to the delay in the figures reported.
People just need to know that there is a time lag from when it is sent until it enters someone’s arm.
–Jenny Johnson, Utah Department of Health
Hospitals are instructed not to administer the vaccine to all staff members at once, “because if they have some side effects they want to be at home and rest, there are no staff who are not able to work.” Johnson also stressed that the vaccine is not the only thing hospitals need to treat.
“These are the same sites that have been treating this onslaught of patients with COVID-19,” he said. “And they’re tired.”
Still, 20% of the vaccine administered is low compared to what other states reported in a recent New York Times article. It showed that neighboring state Colorado had already administered more than 75% of the vaccine and Wyoming had administered almost 50%.
“I can’t talk about why some states have administered more vaccines than Utah,” Johnson said.
But Utah is better than the national average. On Tuesday, the CDC reported that 2.1 million doses had been administered out of the 11.4 million distributed nationwide. This reaches about 18%.
Johnson said the recent COVID-19 relief bill the president signed this week will help distribute the vaccines.
“We need funding from the Cares Act to continue our response efforts,” he said.
Local health departments in the state have also stocked up on some of the vaccines to prepare for the clinics Johnson said will begin this week. Johnson hopes these clinics, combined with ongoing distribution to long-term care facilities, will help bridge the gap between vaccines sent and administered.