Wintry weather continues to impact Minnesota’s vaccination efforts
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Wintry weather is continuing to have an impact on Minnesota’s efforts to get vaccines to people.
Because of delayed vaccine shipments, the state has postponed appointments at some community vaccination clinics.
Vaccination appointments at six sites have been postponed Friday. According to the Minnesota Department of Health, patients who had their appointments postponed will be contacted 24 to 48 hours from their postmonment notice about rescheduling.
MDH says those who had their second dose appointment postponed do not need to restart the vaccine series.
Typically, the state receives about 88,000 doses of the vaccine every week from the federal government. However, the MDH says it is unclear what will happen because of weather impacts.
In this Friday, Jan. 22, 2021 file photo, empty vials of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine are seen at a vaccination center at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas in Las Vegas. Makers of COVID-19 vaccines need everything to go right as they scale up from early-stage production to hundreds of millions of doses – and any little hiccup could cause a delay.[AP Photo/John Locher]
Even without these delays, MDH reports the amount of doses the state is currently receiving is less than 1 percent of the total number of doses that the state needs for everyone to get vaccinated.
State health officials said they are in close contact with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and will continue to monitor the situation.
Crippling weather hampers vaccine deliveries, distribution