Washington health officials say the Covid supply chain from the federal government is becoming a little more certain.
Assistant Health Secretary Michele Roberts briefed a Washington House committee today [Monday].
“The good news is, for the first time ever, we have three weeks of vaccine allocation projections from the federal government. That is previously something we were only getting week-to-week. I’ll say that next week and the following week our allocations, for both of those weeks, increased 35,000 doses," Roberts said.
That means the state will receive about 240,000 doses each of those weeks. She says that could conceivably double by March if the federal government begins sending the increase in supply of the Pfizer vaccine that it recently announced. Also, she reminded the committee that a federal advisory committee will consider the emergency use authorization for the Johnson and Johnson vaccine next week.
“But we don’t have projections for how much supply we'll have of that vaccine yet, but obviously, a third vaccine, and additional allocations, would help increase the speed we can move through different groups," she said.
Roberts says it will be at least a few more weeks before the state is able to finish with the first tier of 1-B vaccine recipients, those who are 65 and older. After them, the next group to be inoculated will be workers in high risk occupations who are 50 and older.