Minnesota is setting up nine pilot vaccine administration sites, but officials warn appointments will fill up extremely fast because the state is receiving 60,000 doses a week from the federal government.
After the CDC changed course last week and expanded its recommendations for vaccinations, teachers, child care workers and those 65 and over are now eligible in Minnesota.
Starting at noon Tuesday over the phone (612-426-7230 or toll free 833-431-2053) or web (mn.gov/vaccine) those groups can try to make an appointment. Gov. Tim Walz said many who want to get their dose will end up disappointed because the current queue after the CDC’s latest recommendations is more than 1 million Minnesotans combined.
“There will be a lot more than 60,00 trying to get on our website,” Walz said. “I plead for your patience. Once we get folks on they get their doses in an orderly manner. We might have to wait until our next set of doses comes.”
Minnesota Dept. of Health Commissioner Jan Malcolm said the high demand is good, especially for the most at-risk populations. She called the vaccine “the exit strategy.”
“The problem of course as the governor has said is we don’t have anywhere near enough doses to bring the pandemic to a swift end,” Malcolm said. “We also need to keep in mind that this nationwide and global vaccination effort is the biggest of its kind in history. It involves a lot of different partners. We literally are in a race against the clock, especially as we now know about the new variance of the virus which has the potential to spread much more easily and quickly.”
Malcolm and Walz said the solution is simply more shipments from the federal government.
“This week very few people in these categories -- over 65, educators, childcare workers -- will start to be vaccinated,” Malcolm said. “For many more of us, there’s going to continue to be a wait of weeks, if not longer until the supply increases.”
She said her staff estimates that at the current vaccination rate, it will take 41/2 months to vaccinate everyone who is currently eligible.
Walz said he’s hopeful for a “clear federal plan” in the coming days, but he and MDH officials are not sure yet how many more doses could be coming to Minnesota or when.
“We in this country need to be vaccinating 4 and 5 million people per day,” Walz said. “We’re still months away. I think expectations that have been set around this have been, obviously they were not correct from what we were being told. Going forward I assume we’re going to get more, but it’s still going to be a challenge.”
Though Malcolm said MDH expects to wrap up at least appointments for group 1a, some folks like dentists or home healthcare aides might feel like they’re being cut in line.
“It is worth it to do this, but it is not without its pitfalls,” Walz said. “One thing we want to make very clear, we’re not going to repeat some of the problems we saw like in Florida where they said everybody show up and we had seniors waiting in line at 3 a.m. and there’s no vaccines, but with this much shortage and this much demand, there are going to be some frustrations and headaches.”
There will be no walk-ups at the site, which in the metro are located in Anoka and Brooklyn Center.
