Washington’s COVID-19 vaccine allocation to increase, Gov. Inslee says
Washington state’s COVID-19 vaccine allocation is getting a boost, Gov. Jay Inslee said Tuesday.
President Joe Biden’s administration has said to expect a 16 percent increase in allotment, Inslee said, on a certain delivery schedule for the next three weeks. And they’ll be sending syringes necessary to “coax” an additional dose out of every vial of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine — resulting in six doses per vial rather than five.
“Having a 16 percent increase is really great news,” Inslee said. “It’s also great news that they’re giving us certainty in those deliveries, because providers have been bedeviled with uncertainty and unpredictability of their delivery schedules.”
After a slow start, Inslee announced a slate of efforts aimed at accelerating the state’s vaccine distribution and administration with a goal of building capacity to administer 45,000 doses per day.
Early last week, the state was administering about 14,000 shots per day on average. As of Tuesday, the seven-day rolling average was just under 24,000. Inslee presented data from recent days that showed further improvement: on Jan. 19, the state tallied 16,146 reported doses. It administered just under 36,500 on Jan. 24, then more than 39,000 on Jan. 25.
The state had administered about 42 percent of the vaccines allocated here as of Jan. 16, according to previous reporting. The state’s data dashboard showed Tuesday that 59.21 percent had been administered as of Jan. 23.
“These measures are working,” Inslee said. “We certainly have a long ways to go, but we have made very significant progress in the last week.”
There are over 800,000 Washingtonians eligible for a vaccine who haven’t yet received one, Inslee said. He’s aware of people who have called multiple locations to get a vaccine unsuccessfully, and that the frustration is “profound.”
He said he hopes people will keep in mind that they can protect themselves while they’re waiting.
“At this moment, we’ve got to double down and increase our protection of ourselves while we are waiting for the vaccine,” Inslee said. “In part because of these new variants that are coming on that we think are much more transmittable and potentially could be more fatal.”
This story was originally published January 26, 2021 at 3:58 PM with the headline "Washington’s COVID-19 vaccine allocation to increase, Gov. Inslee says."
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