MADISON, Wis. UW Health’s vaccination panel showed on Tuesday morning that the health organization had only 93 first doses available and that 22 353 people had been shot.
“It’s really clear that there just isn’t enough vaccine and that there really is a big difference,” said Dr. Matt Anderson, senior medical director of primary care at UW Health, said.
UW Health finally received a shipment of 2,300 doses later in the morning, but some appointments later this week have yet to be scheduled due to a lack of supply.
“It’s definitely not something we would ever want to do. We have definitely pleaded and tried to get more offers, but this is currently the situation we are in, ”Anderson said.
He said UW Health spoke to the state about how many older patients they have in the hopes that DHS would give them more vaccinations. Anderson said that 52,000 patients 65 years and older, UW Health care for about 6% of the state’s population in that age group.
But DHS does not consider how many patients are eligible for a vaccine in a hospital system when deciding where to allocate the doses from the state. Rather, it looks at geographical location and capacity.
At a news conference on Tuesday, Julie Willems Van Dijk, deputy secretary of DHS, explained that many pharmacies in Dane County did not receive a vaccine this week.
‘We asked for 505 vaccines for almost 290,000 vaccinations. And so we had to make very difficult decisions. And one of the difficult decisions we made was that someone whose grant would be less than 50 did not receive a vaccine, “said Willems Van Dijk.” We have a very large number of vaccines in Dane County, which means not everyone will get vaccines, because we have to save vaccines for other parts of the state. “
Although DHS also looks at how many doses of vaccines can be given per week, dr. Anderson said UW Health can give more than double the amount of vaccines it is given.
‘We can give more than 7,000 first doses in a few weeks and then continue to give our second doses. “At the moment, the supply does not affect our ability to use the vaccines in larger quantities,” Anderson said.
At this rate, if UW Health maintains about 2,000 vaccine doses per week, he said it could be the end of April before every patient 65 and older gets a chance to be vaccinated.
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