MILWAUKEE — Despite Wisconsin lagging behind other states in administering COVID-19 vaccines, local health leaders aren’t sounding the alarm just yet.
“We’d all like to be ramping up more quickly,” said Medical College of Wisconsin President and CEO Dr. John Raymond on Wisconsin’s Afternoon News. “We’re maybe one or two percent behind other states, but this is early. We’re in a marathon, not a sprint.”
Dr. Raymond believes the state is doing reasonably well considering the fragility of the Pfizer vaccine, which requires ultra cold chain storage.
“We have months ahead of us trying to vaccinate large amounts of people,” he said.
The Biden administration on Tuesday announced it is going to ramp of vaccine distribution, with a goal of vaccinating 1.5 million people a day within the next three weeks.
Dr. Raymond says there are a lot of variables that will dictate whether that goal is achieved.
“A game changer could be if we have a new player in the market,” Dr. Raymond said. “So if Johnson & Johnson, AstraZeneca or Novavax come to market, they have a mature manufacturing capacity and that could really push our timeframe up into the early spring.”
Click in the player above to hear the entire Milwaukee Health and Economy Briefing.