OMAHA, Neb. (AP) - Nebraska still plans to make coronavirus vaccines available to the general public by late April or early May, but Gov. Pete Ricketts said Monday that a lot of factors could change the state’s timetable.
Ricketts said the speed at which Nebraska moves through its current vaccination phase will depend on how many vaccine shipments it receives in the next few weeks and how quickly health officials can administer them. He said the state expects to see a big jump in single-shot vaccine shipments from drugmaker Johnson & Johnson next week, which could help speed up the massive undertaking.
“There’s a lot of variables out there that we can’t predict at this point, but we have not changed our schedule yet,” Ricketts said at a news conference. State officials have said their biggest challenge in the rollout is getting more vaccines from the federal government.
Nebraska is currently focused on vaccinating residents ages 50 to 64 and people with underlying health conditions that are designated by local doctors and public health officials.
Previous phases focused on residents who are at least 65 years old, employees of hospitals, health clinics and long-term care facilities, first responders, educators and other key groups. Ricketts has defended the state’s largely age-based approach, citing statistics that show most coronavirus deaths have been among the elderly. State officials have also tried to avoid overloading hospitals with virus patients.
Ricketts said the federal government is allocating vaccines to states based on the proportion of residents who are at least 16 years old, and that may hurt Nebraska, which has a relatively large proportion of residents who are younger.
But he said Nebraska’s share of vaccines appears to be “in the ballpark” of what other states have received, based on his conversations with officials from elsewhere. Ricketts, a Republican, said he asked both the Trump and Biden administrations for the federal government’s exact distribution formula, but federal officials haven’t shared the information.
His comments came after neighboring Iowa, a state with roughly 1.2 million more residents than Nebraska, announced that all residents would be eligible for coronavirus vaccinations on April 5 as long as supply projections are met.
Nebraska has fully vaccinated 17% of the 1.48 million residents who are at least 16 years old, according to the state’s online tracking portal. Health officials have administered nearly 89% of the doses that are controlled by the state.
The federally run retail pharmacy program in Nebraska has administered about half of the doses it has received for local pharmacies.
Nebraska has confirmed 206,571 coronavirus cases and 2,135 deaths since the pandemic began. About 83% of those who died were at least 65 years old.
The state had 113 people who were hospitalized with the virus on Monday. The number has trended downward since the record high in mid-November. Ricketts has since relaxed the social-distancing restrictions that were in place at the time.
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