MADISON, WI (WTAQ) – Wisconsin is aiming hit what could likely be the biggest milestone of the COVID-19 vaccination process before the 4th of July.
As vaccinations continue to ramp up and groups are becoming eligible earlier than expected, Deputy state health secretary Julie Willems Van Dijk is optimistic for what this summer may hold.
“If everything goes as planned now, we anticipate that by the end of June we would have enough vaccine in the state to immunize 80% of the population,” Van Dijk predicted. “Assuming we get supply as anticipated from the federal government, sometime by the end of June we should have enough supply in the state. Supply is one thing. Administration and demand are the other two important legs of the stool.”
That administration has been speeding up as well across the state as eligibility groups are now being moved earlier than previously scheduled.
“Generally what we’re looking for is a couple of things. If vaccine appointments start to open up, it indicates to us there is not enough people in the group and we need to increase the pipeline of people eligible to receive vaccine,” Van Dijk said. “We also look at our best estimates of how many people are in that group. When we start to approach 50-percent of a given group, we open up to the next eligibility group…It also depends on how much vaccine we have coming. Our vaccine supply has been creeping up week by week, and that is a big part of the reason we moved up the eligibility for people with chronic medical conditions.”
She points out that the recent move was also made possible because the state recognized how quickly educators and others in Phase 1B were getting their vaccinations.
“We monitor for – are we seeing open appointments? How quickly we are vaccinating? [Monitoring] how large the vaccine supply is, and if we’re actually continuing to see significant increases from the federal government.,” Van Dijk said. “We’ll make decisions about when we may be ready to move to the general public based on those factors.”
Van Dijk says the general public will become eligible by May 1st at the latest.
Currently, more than 23% of Wisconsin residents have received at least one dose of the vaccine and more than 13% are fully vaccinated.
