The state of Wisconsin just finished its third week of distributing COVID-19 vaccinations to health care workers.
To date, 85,609 Wisconsinites have received the vaccine, according to Andrea Palm, the secretary-designee with the Wisconsin Department of Health Services, in a media briefing Tuesday.
That’s a fraction of the nearly 270,000 vaccines that have been distributed to vaccinators around the state.
Palm said vaccination efforts slowed over the holidays.
“The holiday season is over,” she said. “And it is now certainly time to ramp up, and make sure that we are pushing that vaccine that vaccinators have through the system and into arms as quickly and as safely as possible.”
Another 106,900 vaccines allocated for Wisconsin are being set aside in a federal program to be given to residents and workers at long-term care facilities.
Until healthcare workers and people in those nursing facilities receive the vaccine, it will not be available for a greater portion of the public.
Palm said she expects this first stage of the vaccination effort to take several months.
The exact time frame will depend on how much of the vaccine the federal government allocates to Wisconsin in coming weeks.
