As HHS Pushes for Broader Vaccine Allocation, Minnesota Health Officials Say They Need More Info

Hakan Nural on Unsplash

(KNSI) – Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar announced Tuesday that states’ COVID-19 vaccine distribution will soon undergo major changes, including expanding the vaccination pool to people with underlying health conditions and people 65 and older. However, Minnesota health officials are still in the dark about if the state will receive enough vaccines to keep up with this push to vaccinate more at-risk groups.

Azar’s announcement included a message to states to open vaccinations to their most vulnerable populations now. The HHS also confirmed that it would release doses of COVID-19 held back by the Trump Administration; Gov. Tim Walz and several other governors signed a letter last week that asked for this very action.

Minnesota infectious disease director Kris Ehresmann said the Minnesota Department of Health has not yet received any written guidance for the changes announced by HHS Tuesday.

“More vaccine becoming available to more people more quickly would be a welcome development, but we’ll follow the adage ‘trust, but verify,'” Ehresmann said. “A promise to deliver isn’t delivering, and we’ve learned to be patient when it comes to federal government promises.”

Ehresmann said if the state’s vaccine supply increases sometime soon, MDH is ready for it. But state health leaders need that information from federal authorities to ensure everyone who is eligible for a vaccine can get one in a timely manner.

“Planning for vaccines to be more broadly available has been happening in Minnesota for months now,” Ehresmann said. “We’re making steady progress through the first group, that phase 1A, and have been working on plans for the next group of people who will soon be eligible.”

That next group, phase 1B, includes essential workers and people ages 75 and up, per the latest guidance from the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices. Minnesota’s vaccine allocation workgroup has met this month to determine priority groups within phase 1B, but Ehresmann said Azar’s announcement and the unknowns that come with it might delay the workgroup’s guidance.

“We were planning to announce it next week, to have everything put together to announce, but certainly this news impacts that,” she said. “We’re going to need to reevaluate how we announce things in light of what we heard today.”

The state is still in phase 1A, and vaccinations are underway for people in the first and second priority groups within that phase. Phase 1B rollout could start in early February, Ehresmann said.

As of Saturday’s data, 144,503 Minnesotans have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine. Just over 7,000 have gotten their second dose. According to the MDH, those doses administered represent 35.6 percent of the state’s total allocation so far.

Earlier Tuesday, MDH launched a COVID-19 vaccine data dashboard with county-level numbers for how many people have been vaccinated, what proportions of vaccines have been administered to different groups of people and so on.