Wisconsin Covid-19 Vaccinations to Start by Week’s End

Fifty thousand Wisconsinites will be vaccinated as a part of phase 1A of the Wisconsin Department of Health Services vaccination plan, which will start by the end of the week.

A little after 1 p.m. on Dec. 14 Duty Officer Darcy Dubois, of the Milwaukee Unified Emergency Operations Center told members of the Intergovernmental Cooperation Council of Milwaukee County that 50,000 doses of the Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine will arrive in Wisconsin this week. The Pfizer vaccine was approved by the FDA last week for emergency use. It was originally believed that this many doses would only be able to vaccinate 25,000 people, but good news from the CDC over the weekend changed that.

“We have been informed that the CDC is holding the matching dose for each of the doses they are shipping out,” said Dubois. “The CDC will have an additional 50,000 doses available to ship out in 3 weeks for the second dose.”

Frontline healthcare workers and systems will be given the priority when vaccinations start, according to Dubois. Other people who will be given priority access to the vaccine are long-term care workers and residents, as well as firefighters and emergency medical services workers, according to Dubois.

“It is going to be a challenge with just the volume of people that are registered [to administer the vaccine],” said Ann Christiansen, who is the health director of the North Shore Health Department.

According to Dubois, the state said local health departments would receive the vaccine within the next two to three. Currently, there are 227 entities who have submitted applications to administer the vaccine, according to Christiansen.

Shipments of vaccines are expected to arrive weekly, according to Dubois. The number of vaccines in each shipment are expected to rise each week as well, according to Dubois.

Sharing vaccines and vaccination data between vaccination sites and local health departments will be crucial to efficiently administer the vaccines to people and determine which areas need additional resources.

“There are many logistics to figure out,” said Dubois. “The vaccines are more difficult than some of the vaccines we have worked with in the past.”

One such difficulty of the Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine is that it requires deep-freeze storage, according to Christiansen. Most vaccination sites are not equipped with the capability to store the vaccine in this manner.

“There are hubs around Wisconsin and those hubs are going to be maintaining [the vaccine] in a deep-freeze and distribute it,” said Christiansen. “Those places receiving [the vaccine] will have within five days for use.”

The Moderna vaccine is being reviewed by the FDA this week and, if approved, Wisconsin could see additional vaccine shipments come in starting next week, according to Dubois. According to Christiansen, the Moderna vaccine does not require deep-freeze storage and can be kept at all of the sites that have applied to become Covid-19 vaccination sites.

Other concerns held by Dubois and the UEOC included the ability to administer both of the two doses of the vaccine to people and the logistics of having large numbers of people come to a place to have the vaccine administered to them.

According to Dubois, the UEOC is prepared to continue its current messaging that social distancing and masking are important to continue as vaccines start to be administered. According to Dubois, it is important to do so because it will take some time before herd immunity is established at local and state levels.

According to Dubois, it is also important to keep Covid-19 testing sites open so that we can continue to track the virus. But as we approach the end of the year funding for testing sites to remain open in 2021 remains low.

“We all share the same concerns as mayors and village presidents about what assuredly looks to be an end of the year with no additional funding committed to next year at the state and federal level,” said South Milwaukee Mayor Erik Brooks.

According to Dubois, Miller Park has available and ongoing funding to continue testing in 2021. Milwaukee County is also finalizing contracts with Curative Care Network to provide mobilized testing sites, according to Dubois. Unfortunately, the South Shore does not have funding for next year, according to Dubois.

“If that does not change [South Shore] will most likely close at the end of December,” said Dubois.