Inslee: Statewide Vaccine Efforts Ramping Up

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Washington state’s rate of COVID-19 vaccinations is climbing, as Gov. Jay Inslee reported that daily doses had been reporting close to 40,000.

In a press conference Tuesday, Inslee provided an update on the state’s efforts for vaccinating against COVID-19. Generally, the governor said that the measures he had introduced roughly a week before the press conference were working.

Inslee said that the state had increased its vaccine administration from 14,000 to 24,000 per day in the past week, as of the latest seven-day rolling average. On Jan. 24 alone, the state did more than 39,000 doses of the vaccine, according to the governor.

The increases in numbers were due to better reporting of vaccine administration; higher requirements from the state for providers to administer the vaccine; a “massive public-private partnership” with businesses including Microsoft, Starbucks, Costco, Amazon and leaders of labor organizations; and help from thousands of volunteers across the state, Inslee said.

As of the press conference, Inslee said more than a half-million Washingtonians had received the vaccine. He noted he and his wife, Trudi, received the first dose of the vaccine at the Sea Mar Clinic in Olympia Jan. 22.

With about 7 percent of the state vaccinated per the latest population statistics, Inslee said there were more than 800,000 Washingtonians eligible to receive the vaccine in the current phases of administration who have yet to receive a dose, which he said was due to limitations from federal resources.

Inslee said there were 886 providers in the state currently enrolled in the federal vaccine distribution program, with another 500 lined up. He said that it would take “some weeks before we can get through the next tranche to get to the next group of eligible folks.”



At the press conference, Inslee said a group of state governors were on a call earlier that day with President Joe Biden’s administration where they were told they could expect a 16-percent increase in allotment of doses nationally on the distribution in the next three weeks, which the governor said could reasonably mean a similar result in the state. He added that the delivery schedule provided had a certainty to it unlike that in the past administration, which he said had an uncertainty that “bedeviled” providers of the vaccine in prior weeks.

Inslee added that the state would be supplied a type of syringe that would be able to extract an additional dose of vaccine from provided vials, leading to a 20-percent increase in total doses from vaccines produced by Pfizer’s research. Pfizer’s vaccine is alongside one produced by Moderna, with a third, produced by AztraZeneca, proposed.

“This is really great news, that within such short order the Biden administration has been able to produce an increase of supply, which is the ultimate issue that we have to deal with,” he said. “That’s really great news.”

Though vaccines are being administered, the governor warned against “a tendency now that the vaccine is near or here for many people to let up our guard, to reduce our mask usage, to allow more people to come into our home.”

Inslee reiterated the ability for Washingtonians to “control our own destiny” through adherence and restraint.

“We ought to double down and increase our protection of ourselves,“ the governor said. He noted how new variants of COVID-19 have shown to be more transmissible, “and potentially more fatal.”