76,000 vaccinated so far in Bay State
At last count, 78,643 Massachusetts residents — mostly health care workers on the front lines — had received their coronavirus vaccines and the state had received 285,050 of the 300,000 shots anticipated before the year’s end, according to state health data dated Tuesday.
Last week, 32,590 people got their shots — down from the 46,052 vaccinated the first week, according to the state’s weekly coronavirus vaccine dashboard released Thursday. Health officials said the lower numbers are due to the Christmas holiday.
Of those vaccinated since Dec. 15, 92% — or 72,309 — are hospital workers. Doctors, nurses and attendants are first in line for shots under a three-phase vaccine distribution plan that prioritizes people based on their risk of exposure. The remaining doses have been administered at other employee health settings such as neighborhood clinics and doctors’ offices.
At a press conference on Wednesday Worcester Medical Director Dr. Michael Hirsh said of getting his vaccine, “I finally felt like I was being given a coat of armor or some Kevlar or something that was going to protect me for the first time.”
On Monday, CVS Health began to administer COVID19 vaccines at 1,995 skilled nursing and assisted living facilities in Massachusetts, where residents have been hard hit by the pandemic, but none of those numbers were reflected data released in Thursday’s dashboard.
The dashboard also revealed that 285,050 total cumulative doses have been shipped to providers in Massachusetts at of 11:59 p.m. Tuesday — shy of the 300,000 doses promised to the state by the year’s end. That breaks down to 138,450 Pfizer doses and 146,600 Moderna doses.
The most vaccine doses have been shipped to Suffolk County (126,800), followed by Middlesex County (38,125), Worcester County (30,200), and Hampden County (16,600).
The 70-plus age group has received 2% of the vaccine doses (1,673); the 50-69 age group has received 36% of the doses (28,501); the 30-49 age group has received 44% of the doses (34,326); the 2029 age group has received 18% of the doses (13,945); and the under-20 age group has received less than 1% of the doses (198).