LANSING, Michigan (AP) – Michigan announced Friday that all residents 16 years of age and older will be eligible for the COVID-19 vaccine on April 5, nearly a month before the promised May 1 date. by President Joe Biden.
People between 16 and 49 years old with certain medical conditions or disabilities will be classified from March 22, when young people aged 50 to 64 can start receiving shots under a prior announcement. Two days later, on March 24, a federally selected regional mass vaccination site will open at Detroit’s Ford Field to administer an additional 6,000 doses a day for two months.
“The safe COVID-19 vaccine is the most effective way to protect yourself, your family and others from the virus,” Governor Gretchen Whitmer said in a statement. “It will help the country return to normalcy and help the economy.”
Michigan was the third state to announce broad eligibility this week. In Alaska, people over the age of 16 are already eligible. Utah will allow those who are at least 18 years old to be vaccinated beginning April 1.
The United States expects to have enough doses for adults by the end of May, but Biden has warned that the process of administering those doses will take time. As of Wednesday, approximately 1.8 million people, 22% of Michigan’s population over the age of 16, had been fully or partially vaccinated.
Whitmer and state health officials said they opened up eligibility based on the number of vaccines planned and the May 1 directive Biden issued Thursday in his first early speech. According to the state health department, it can take “several weeks” beyond April 5 for anyone who wants to get the vaccine to have an appointment. He said providers should take into account, when scheduling appointments, the risk of a person being exposed to the workplace and their vulnerability to serious illness.
The Detroit site will operate 12 and a half hours each day for eight weeks, vaccinating at least 168,000 people with two shots of Pfizer, potentially more if a single-dose vaccine is used in the last two weeks. Detroit was selected by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which prioritizes vulnerable areas. Instructions on how to book an appointment will be announced in the coming days.
Kevin Sligh, FEMA’s interim administrator in the Great Lakes region, said the site will expand the vaccination rate “in an efficient, effective and equitable manner, with an explicit focus on ensuring that local communities with a high risk of COVID-19 exposure and infections are not far behind ”.
___
Follow David Eggert on https://twitter.com/DavidEggert00