Here & Now

Vaccine Rollout

Frederica Freyberg:

Now to COVID-19 news. This week Assembly Speaker Robin Vos wrote a letter to Governor Evers describing the state effort to secure and distribute vaccine as “woefully inadequate.” Not positive feedback for the officials now embarked on the most complicated public health effort of their lifetimes. We get the latest on the state’s vaccine supply and distribution plans now from Julie Willems Van Dijk, the deputy secretary of the Department of Health Services. Thanks very much for being here.

Julie Willems Van Dijk:

You’re welcome.

Frederica Freyberg:

What is your response to those words from Speaker Vos?

Julie Willems Van Dijk:

Well, I think we have taken on a herculean effort and we have people across the state who are doing everything they can to move vaccine quickly and get it in the arms of Wisconsinites. There is always going to be a delay between when vaccine is allocated, shipped and in arms, but we are now over 200,000 vaccines given and we will continue to march forward in protecting the people of Wisconsin.

Frederica Freyberg:

Is it true that — I mean, so you’ve given 200,000 vaccines, but are there another 200,000 kind of waiting here in Wisconsin to be given?

Julie Willems Van Dijk:

Well, that 200,000 number represents both vaccines that are in transit and that are in inventory. So if you look at that number in any given week, about half of them, 100,000, are actually the vaccines that are currently being shipped. So you can’t give a vaccine that’s still on the FedEx truck. And the other 100,000 are in the inventory to be delivered in a week. So proportionally there’s always going to be these vaccines in transit. But as we go on, it will be a smaller percentage of the total number administered.

Frederica Freyberg:

Are there issues in Wisconsin with getting these vaccines out as fast as possible? I know that you have said we need more vaccine from the feds.

Julie Willems Van Dijk:

Mm-hmm. Yes. There’s not a problem with getting vaccine out to our vaccinators. We have a great system moving that forward although it does take a little bit of time. For the Pfizer vaccine, it’s delivered to our regional hubs and then re-distributed. We made over 156 deliveries last week. So again, that’s going to take a few weeks. But just to give you a sense, if we’re going to get to 80% herd immunity by September of this year, we need over a million doses a month to do that. And right now we’re not receiving half of that. We’re only receiving about 457,000 doses a month. So we’ve got to increase the vaccine supply if we’re going to achieve those goals.

Frederica Freyberg:

I believe that we are still in the first phase where health care workers and those in nursing homes are being given the vaccine. Is Wisconsin micromanaging the allocation as the U.S. health secretary claims of states?

Julie Willems Van Dijk:

I think Wisconsin is being very deliberate about how we’re managing this. There’s over 550,000 people in that first phase. We’ve given vaccine to about 185,000 people. So we know there’s more people to be vaccinated in that phase. We don’t want to create chaos of health systems, phone systems and IT systems crashing by opening up to everybody and not having enough slots for appointments or enough vaccine. So we’re doing this in a methodical way.

Frederica Freyberg:

So with that said, who’s next and how will they know that they’re next in line?

Julie Willems Van Dijk:

Yeah. We have a proposal open for public comment right now, but it will be older adults, police and fire, educators, people who live in congregate settings is what is on the table and I’m confident much of that will move forward. And they’ll know through a variety of mechanisms. The media, our website. We’ve set up a new email people can sign up for to get updates on vaccine. And we’re working with our health care providers that as we identify a group, like people over 65, they can reach out to their patients for scheduling.

Frederica Freyberg:

Awesome. All right. Well, thank you very much. Julie Willems Van Dijk, we appreciate it.

Julie Willems Van Dijk:

Thank you.