About 10,000 have been vaccinated in Wisconsin
About 10,000 people have received the COVID-19 vaccine in Wisconsin as of Monday morning, state health officials said.
And the first doses of the Moderna vaccine were expected to arrive at health care facilities Monday, with additional shipments throughout the week, said Julie Willems Van Dijk, deputy secretary for the state Department of Health Services.
About 100,000 Moderna doses are expected to arrive in the state in the “upcoming weeks,” a DHS spokeswoman said.
Officials earlier said all 100,000 doses would arrive this week.
About 35,100 doses of the Pfizer vaccine are expected to arrive this week as well.
The state previously expected nearly 50,000 Pfizer doses to arrive this week. The federal government late last week said there was an error in the initial estimates for states’ allocations.
Wisconsin expects to receive about 35,000 Pfizer doses each week for the next few weeks.
At the pace of 50,000 Pfizer doses each week, the state believed it could finish immunizing health care workers and nursing homes in nine to 10 weeks, Willems Van Dijk said. It will take longer if Wisconsin continues to receive just 35,000 Pfizer doses each week.
Much of the effort last week was focused on preparing to distribute the vaccine smoothly to ensure no Pfizer doses are wasted because they weren’t kept cold enough or weren’t administered correctly, Willems Van Dijk said.
DHS worked with the hospital systems to finalize paperwork on detailed delivery logistics — listing specific loading docks where the trucks should park, for example.
“That’s essential because we cannot waste vaccine,” Willems Van Dijk said.
With the paperwork finished, all hospital systems in the state will receive doses of vaccine this week, Willems Van Dijk said.
On Friday, some hospital systems, such as Appleton-based ThedaCare, said they were still waiting for the vaccine.
Willems Van Dijk said she expects the vaccination process to speed up in the coming days and weeks. She said hospitals and health care systems needed some time to learn how to safely administer and store it.
“I think the fact that we’re doing it within 48, 72 hours, one week, that we’ve had 10,000 doses given, is really incredible when you think about how brand spanking new this is and how we didn’t have the final guidance until last weekend,” she said.
Last week the state received 49,725 doses of the
Pfizer vaccine.
“If people are willy-nilly or haphazard with it and haven’t read the instructions ... you will be giving ineffective doses. We could have given 49,000 and have half of them not be valid, and we’d be in way worse shape,” Willems Van Dijk said.
The Moderna vaccine will be shipped directly to vaccination sites such as hospitals and clinics. It will not rely on the “hub” distribution model for the Pfizer vaccine since it does not need to be kept as cold.
The state has set aside 29,000 Moderna doses of the batch of 100,000 for nursing homes. Vaccinators with CVS and Walgreens will begin giving Wisconsin nursing home residents shots next week.
The pharmacy program then will begin vaccinating residents of other long-term care facilities, such as assisted living facilities and senior homes, Willems Van Dijk said.
Those facilities should begin receiving doses in “the next few weeks,” but the exact timeline is still unknown and depends on how many doses the federal government sends, she said.
“We have to know where we’re at with vaccine coming from the federal government in order to know we have enough vaccine in the bank to ... begin that part of the program,” Willems Van Dijk said.
The School Sisters of Notre Dame in Elm Grove, where eight sisters recently died of COVID-19, will be in the second round of vaccinations with other longterm care centers. Even though it provides care to elderly and ill nurses, it does not qualify as a skilled nursing facility.
Also Monday, Andrew Petersen, president of the University of Wisconsin System Board of Regents, told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that the system is having conversations with the federal government about how it can help distribute the vaccine.
The success campuses have had in partnering with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to provide rapid-result testing to Wisconsinites was an example of how UW’s reach could help with the vaccination effort, he said.
“I think we will become a vaccine distribution hub,” Petersen said. “It will start with our faculty and staff and then it again will be for the community.”
New COVID-19 cases continued their decline Monday from record highs recorded in mid-November.
On Monday the state reported 1,435 new COVID-19 cases and eight deaths, bringing the death toll to 4,425. Mondays typically turn out the lowest counts of the week, as fewer tests are conducted and processed over the weekend.
The average number of new daily cases over the last week was 2,817, down from over 6,400 a month ago. The seven-day death average is 51.
As of Monday, 1,308 people were hospitalized with COVID-19 in Wisconsin, including 272 patients in intensive care units. COVID-19 hospitalizations are down nearly 1,000 from the mid-November peak.