Health systems asking Michigan state officials to speed up COVID-19 vaccine deliveries have an ally now in U.S. health secretary Alex Azar, who announced Tuesday he has authorized release of all Pfizer and Moderna doses the federal government has warehoused for second doses.
But Azar also said the earliest states could receive the hundreds of thousands of extra doses is two weeks, after Joe Biden is inaugurated as the nation’s 46th president.
This week, Michigan received one of the lowest number of doses since mid-December, 60,450, which resulted in fewer distributions by five-fold than what health systems, local health departments and federally qualified health centers requested, system executives said.
Spokesperson Lynn Sutfin of the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services told Crain’s Wednesday morning that the federal government has only promised 62,400 doses of the Pfizer vaccine for next week.
Until the end of the month, the state’s Moderna