Governor Gives Update on Vaccine Rollout on Tuesday

Wednesday, January 6th, 2021 -- 8:05 AM

(WBAY) For the first time this year, Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers and DHS Secretary-Designee Andrea Palm gave a vaccine rollout update Tuesday.

“While the start of a new calendar year brings with it a whole assortment of fresh starts, this is one area where there is no reset button,” said Governor Evers.

Although there is no reset button, Evers said there is a ‘forward’ button as long as people continue to follow CDC guidelines while waiting for a COVID-19 vaccine.

“As governor, I hope interest doesn’t move us away from important work of making sure we don’t make it worse while we are fussing around this issue,” said Evers. “All this interest in the vaccine, I get it, but at the end of the day, if we let our guard down based on expectation we are going to get the shot tomorrow, and life is going to be good, we will be making a horrible mistake.”

As of Tuesday, about a third of the vaccines shipped to the state have been administered. Of the 266,725 doses shipped, a little more than 85,000 have been given.

Palm said those numbers will increase dramatically over the next few weeks.  “The good news is that our vaccinator capacity has grown significantly,” said Palm.

“In early December, we had fewer than 50 registered vaccinators. As of yesterday, we have more than 1,000 vaccine providers that are able to administer the COVID-19 vaccine,” said Palm.

Some have criticized the vaccine rollout here in Wisconsin, comparing the state numbers to surrounding states. Both Pam and Evers say that’s not a fair comparison.

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