Credit: Phil Roeder via Flickr
Historic cold and winter storms in the central and southern United States are impacting the distribution of the COVID vaccine to the point of postponing consultations in six Minnesota locations.
The state of Minnesota said it had to postpone consultations and two vaccination sites in the community on Thursday, and four more sites on Friday.
The affected locations are St. Cloud, Rochester Willow Creek (Thursday and Friday postponements), Minneapolis, Fergus Falls, North Mankato and Thief River Falls.
Anyone with an appointment at these locations is being contacted to inform them of the postponement, and they will receive a response within 24-48 hours about rescheduling “as soon as possible”.
MDH told Bring Me The News that if some of those affected are waiting for the second dose, “it’s okay if the second dose takes a while” and they don’t need to restart the vaccine series.
“The state is diligently monitoring the situation and will provide these doses to Minnesota residents as soon as possible, once the federal government confirms when the vaccine will reach Minnesota,” added a spokesman.
It comes as a deep freeze continues to impact several states, including Oklahoma and Texas, causing power cuts, continuous blackouts and gas shortages in large regions of the country.
The Minnesota Department of Health says one of the victims of the deadly winter storms has delayed the federal government’s delivery of part of this week’s delivery of COVID-19 to Minnesota.
The department says it is in “close contact” with the CDC, but has warned that “additional shipping delays can cause significant operational challenges for state locations and other suppliers”.
Minnesota launched on Thursday a new service called Vaccine Connector, where people can sign up to be informed when they qualify for a vaccine and when one is available near them
Earlier this week, St. Louis County announced that it was forced to cancel COVID vaccine appointments due to supply problems caused by winter storms.