(KNSI) – Gov. Tim Walz will announce Friday that all Minnesota residents 16 and older will become eligible for the COVID-19 vaccine beginning March 30th.
Walz will formally make the announcement at 11:30 a.m. Friday.
“We worked hard to vaccinate Minnesotans sooner than we originally projected, and we have made tremendous progress getting vaccines to Minnesotans who need them most,” said Walz’s spokesperson Teddy Tschann. “Now, it’s time to get as many Minnesotans vaccinated as quickly as possible to end this pandemic.
“The final eligibility expansion comes as the federal government has promised an increased supply of vaccine by April, and as Minnesota has become a national leader in getting shots into arms quickly,” Tschann continued.
Minnesota Public Radio first reported that public health offices and health care systems had been in conversation with state health leaders about the expanded eligibility before Walz’s office publicly announced the change.
The anticipated broadening of Minnesota’s COVID-19 vaccine eligibility comes as health leaders expect the state’s weekly vaccine allotment from the federal government to increase considerably. This change could come as early as the first week of April.
“It would be a total of about 507,000 doses” per week, state infectious disease director Kris Ehresmann said Thursday. She added that that figure includes first and second doses — Minnesota would see around 304,000 first doses per week through its state allocation and the Federal Retail Pharmacy Program for COVID-19 Vaccination.
Health Commissioner Jan Malcolm says that as eligibility for the vaccine expands, there will be focused efforts to reach vulnerable populations who still need access to the vaccine.
“There will continue to be this real focus on immunizing for the best impact and from an equity perspective, and that’ll show up in the ways that we allocate doses to specific providers and teh specific opportunities that we will creat for specific groups to get vaccinated,” Malcolm said.
On Thursday, Minnesota health leaders also celebrated a milestone in the state’s vaccination effort: nearly all long-term care residents and staff have had the opportunity to receive their two doses of the vaccine.
“It’s really encouraging that as of the last report, statewide, 80 percent of residents in skilled nursing facilities or nursing homes and 85 percent of residents in assisted living facilities have now received two doses of the vaccine,” Malcolm said.
Roughly half of the state’s long-term care staff are now vaccinated, a number Malcolm says is not as high as the Minnesota Department of Health would like it to be. She acknowledged that some staff chose to defer getting the vaccine until they had the chance to learn more about it.
“Nobody needs to feel guilty or embarrassed to have questions about the vaccine,” Malcolm said. “We want all Minnesotans to have the opportunity to get the information that they need so that they can make a well-informed decision.”
Malcolm said the responsibility for ending the pandemic is not solely on the shoulders of health care providers or the government — “it takes all of us. We all need to work together to do our part.”
Per the latest data, more than 1,475,000 Minnesotans have gotten at least one dose of the vaccine, representing more than a quarter of the state’s population. 79.4 percent of residents 65 and older have received at least one dose. Since late December, 2,305,796 doses of the vaccine have been administered in the state.
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