Gov. Jim Justice is looking ahead to covid-19 vaccinations actions announced by the Biden administration.
“Yesterday, President Joe Biden announced the purchase of 200 million more vaccine doses and offered up an increased distribution to all states next week,” Justice said during a regular briefing today.
“They also announced the Department of Health and Human Services will provide vaccine allocation estimates for the upcoming three weeks as opposed to the one-week lookahead that we previously had.”
West Virginia will receive an additional 3,700 doses of Moderna vaccine next week, Justice said today.
That will provide some help with the demand on West Virginia’s vaccination drive.
State figures show 171,235 first doses administered, at a 95 percent rate through today. Another 46,094 second doses have been administered.
“We’re saving lives, and we need to just keep it going and keep it up,” Justice said. “We keep screaming like crazy for more and more and more doses of vaccine.”
West Virginia opened up an online pre-registration for vaccinations at the beginning of this week. That is resulting in a waiting list — likely a long one — while West Virginia hopes the vaccine supply goes up.
The Biden administration announced Tuesday that the weekly supply of vaccine to states will be boosted next week.
“We will both increase the supply in the short term by more than 15% and give our state and local partners more certainty about when the deliveries will arrive,” Biden said in a Tuesday news conference.
And the administration anticipates the agreement to purchase more vaccine supplies will enable the vaccination of 300 million Americans by late summer or early fall.
“We are taking action to increase supply and increase capacity. But even so, it will be months before everyone who wants a vaccine will be able to get one,” Andy Slavitt, senior adviser to the White House COVID-19 Response Team, said during a briefing today.
Justice emphasized today, as he has many times recently, that West Virginia would be able to administer thousands more doses of vaccine if the state just had that much.
“We just don’t get the vaccines, and that’s our big problem right now,” the governor said.
The governor said West Virginia hoped to demonstrate its efficiency and enormous demand. But so far, he acknowledged, that hasn’t gotten the state special consideration.
“We thought we were going to be rewarded by doing this tremendous job,” he said. “I absolutely believe that in short order, production will move up and we’ll be able to get more and more and more vaccines.”
Justice suggested that the reward ha been assuring health for thousands of state residents who have received vaccinations.
“By doing great work and not leaving them in a warehouse somewhere we’ve saved a bunch, a bunch of lives,” he said.
James Hoyer, the chief of West Virginia’s multi-agency vaccination task force, addressed the question of whether the state is confident it has enough second doses to accommodate those who received their first.
“We are receiving the appropriate number of doses we need to make sure West Virginians who get the first dose get the second dose,” Hoyer said.