MADISON, Wisconsin (AP) – About 2 million Wisconsin residents, including those with certain pre-existing conditions, will be eligible for the coronavirus vaccine in the next round to be announced later this week, said deputy secretary of state health on Monday.
This would be the largest individual expansion of people eligible for the vaccine in Wisconsin since the first doses started arriving in the state in mid-December. These were targeted at frontline health professionals and then expanded to those over 65 and, this month, a group of 700,000 people. including all teachers, were eligible.
Health officials have been under pressure to increase the number of eligible people with underlying health conditions that could put them at greater risk of serious illnesses if they were given COVID-19. State health officials have been working to determine what pre-existing conditions will make a person eligible and are expected to announce the next group, about 2 million people, on Thursday, said Julie Willems Van Dijk, deputy secretary of the Department of Health Services. Wisconsin health.
It made no sense to allow such a large group of people to become eligible before, when vaccine supply was limited to just 70,000 doses per week, Willems Van Dijk said in an interview. But now, with the state receiving more than double that number of doses per week, not counting 48,000 of the Johnson & Johnson single-dose vaccine this week, it’s time to expand eligibility, she said.
Expanding too fast and creating hope that the vaccine will be available, although supply can no longer meet demand, it remains a concern, said Willems Van Dyke.
“It keeps me up at night, that we’re going to go really fast,” she said.
Wisconsin’s vaccine supply is expected to increase from late March through April, which is in line with President Joe Biden’s promise that there will be enough vaccine nationally for everyone who wants it by the end of May. State health officials say anyone who wants to be vaccinated will be able to get it by the end of June or early July.
Consideration was also given to the progress being made in vaccinating those who are already eligible, said Willems Van Dyke.
Over 60% of people over 65 received at least one dose. They are among nearly 1.1 million people who have received at least one dose and nearly 604,000 have been fully vaccinated in Wisconsin, based on state health data.
In total, 19.7% of the state’s population received at least one dose, ranking 18th in the country, according to the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The national average is 18.1%.
Estimating how many people will be in the next eligibility group, known as 1c, is difficult because many of them may already be eligible, such as teachers, health professionals, traffic workers, grocery workers and people over 65, said Willems Van Dyke .
“It is getting increasingly difficult to know exactly how many people will be in an age group, but it will be a group of significant size,” she said, estimating it to be around 2 million.
The state is rushing to expand vaccinations to anticipate new contagious variants of the virus. Two variants have already been detected in Wisconsin, even with new cases, hospitalizations and deaths continuing to decline. As of Monday, almost 567,000 people had tested positive since the pandemic began and 6,481 died. No new deaths were reported on Monday and there were only 178 new positive cases, but the numbers are always lower on Mondays.
In the past two weeks, the average number of new daily cases has decreased by 14.7% in Wisconsin, according to Johns Hopkins University. Wisconsin has ranked 46th across the country in new cases per capita in the past two weeks.
As the number of cases has decreased, companies that had been closed are beginning to reopen.
The Milwaukee Art Museum, the Milwaukee Public Museum and the Harley Davidson Museum opened last weekend for the first time this year. Discovery World plans to open later this month.
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported that the museums were opened after careful planning and coordination with the city’s health department.
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