With COVID vaccine approval days away, Washington gears up to distribute first doses

The approval of a COVID-19 vaccine for use in the United States is potentially just days away, and Washington state is gearing up to distribute the first round of doses.

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“What we do know at this point is that before Dec. 15, we should be getting about 62,400 doses of the Pfizer vaccine, and during the month of December total, 219,000 of that vaccine,” said John Wiesman, state Secretary of Health, in a Tuesday press conference with the governor.

“Right now we’re enrolling providers, and we are assuring that we’ll be able to have vaccine across the state,” Wiesman added.

The first group to be vaccinated in Washington state will be the high-risk health care workers, followed by folks in long-term care settings, says Wiesman, all expected during the month of December.

“Those employers are working with their employees to identify who’s at highest risk and, using guidelines that we have, are identifying those folks,” Wiesman said. “So we will be making final allocations later this week and next week into which places [the vaccine] will go.”

In Washington state, Wiesman says there are more than 300,000 health care workers in the high-risk category that will be among the first to receive the COVID vaccine, once approved.

“It’s important to remember there are over about 300,000 health care workers who fall in this high-risk category, is our estimate. And that includes not just doctors and nurses but also other support staff who are providing care to these individuals,” Wiesman said. “So it’s going to take us a number of weeks to be able — and into January — to be able to get through to all of those folks.”

The state knows what to expect through December in terms of number of doses, and Wiesman says they expect weekly shipments after that though the volumes of those shipments are not yet known.

Pfizer’s COVID vaccine is expected to be reviewed Thursday, followed by a review of the Moderna vaccine a week later. Both vaccines require a two-dose administration with Pfizer’s second dose 21 days after the first, and Moderna’s second dose 28 days later.

Wiesman says once the Moderna vaccine is approved, the state anticipates 182,000 doses of that vaccine by the end of the year.

“Hope is here. A vaccine is on the way. It’s going to take a bit of time, and until then we need everybody continuing to practice these safe practices and keep everyone healthy,” Wiesman said.

“And the thing about these vaccines, this is an amazing achievement,” Gov. Inslee added. “Most of these vaccines [take] five to eight years, this is done in months. This is just a fantastic gift, and when I think about it, I just hate to think people will lose their lives before the [vaccine], just in the upcoming months because we’re not wearing masks and the like.”

Monday, Dec. 7, marked the anniversary of Pearl Harbor, in which more than 2,000 sailors lost their lives. Gov. Inslee pointed out that we’re losing more people than that from COVID-19 every day in the United States right now.

“We ask people to go fight foreign wars, we ought to ask people, and we do ask people, to be wearing a mask right now,” he said. “… We don’t think it’s too much to ask to wear a mask because it will just get more people to that magic day when that vaccine is distributed broadly.”

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The governor says knowing an approved vaccine is days away is good news for our state and our people.

“I hope that it emboldens us to recommit ourselves and re-energize ourselves,” he said, “and get in touch with the strength of our innate resilience in the next several weeks to get to that vaccine.”