Virginia, from a review of the CDC COVID-19 vaccine dashboard, is actually doing better getting vaccines into arms.
Which isn’t to say that we’re doing anything close to what we need to be doing.
“Everyone is out of patience, and I understand,” Gov. Ralph Northam said today during a briefing for the media on COVID-19. “It will take time to reach everyone, but we’re reaching more people every day, and the pace is increasing.”
And, surprise: it is.
According to the CDC, Virginia has administered 629,019 vaccinations, which works out to 7,368 per 100,000 residents.
Nationally, we’re at just under 24.7 million vaccine doses administered, which works out to 7,448 per 100K.
We’re averaging 26,010 vaccinations per day here in Virginia.
Northam tried today to take credit for surpassing his goal of 25,000 per day, but, come on.
At 25,000 per day, it would take us 688 days to vaccinate everybody in the Commonwealth.
Put that into context with President Biden’s modest goal of 1.5 million vaccine doses per day.
Biden gets us to full vaccination in 441 days.
Neither is going to cut it; the bar obviously needs to be set higher.
In the meantime, we are where we are.
Northam talked up today how his administration has been working with hospitals to transfer any excess supply, which is great, but also suggests poor planning back in the fall.
“Hospitals have really stepped up and I appreciate that,” Northam said. “By shifting inventory around, we’re going to be able to increase the number of shots this week by about 20 percent. That’s about 40,000 more shots by this Sunday, on top of the 175,000 that were already planned, and that is good news.”
Then Northam announced that COVID-19 restrictions – his 12-5 a.m. curfew, the cutoff for on-premises alcohol sales being 10 a.m., the reduction in the size of social gatherings from 25 to 10 – are being extended at least through the end of February.
Might as well say “indefinitely.”
As his administration dithers to reach its way, way too modest goals for getting us back to where we need to be.
Story by Chris Graham
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