Colorado Governor Jared Polis posted a YouTube video yesterday, sharing perhaps more information than anyone needs about the expected vaccination program that will be unfolding in the state over the next several months. The Governor said that Colorado expects to receive 46,800 doses of the Pfizer vaccine.
“Of course, we’ve learned to believe it when we see it,” the Governor said with a smile. “We’ve had different numbers of tests and masks [promised in the past] and the numbers that were delivered were a little different than the numbers we thought…”
The state expects to receive its first shipment of Pfizer vaccine next week. The state is also expecting, at some point, 95,600 doses of the Moderna vaccine, if and when that vaccine is approved. (Approval is expected.) It would appear, from the charts included in the video, that the Moderna vaccine might arrive in late December.
“That’s our allocation; that’s the maximum we can get. We obviously want more, and we expect more over time, but that will be the initial amount.”
Both the Pfizer and Moderna vaccine require two doses administered about a month apart. This might mean that, although the state expects 142,000 doses, that is enough for only 71,000 individuals. (The video is not clear on this point.)
The US Census currently estimates about 5.8 million people living in Colorado in 2020. 71,000 people would be slightly more than 1% of the state’s population.
Here’s is yesterday’s 45-minute press conference featuring Governor Polis and other state officials, explaining the plan:
The Pfizer vaccine has been administered to thousands of people in the UK since the middle of last week, and at least two people had an allergic reaction to the vaccine.
From an article in USA Today, posted yesterday:
Allergic reactions were not a significant problem in the U.S. trial in which more than 20,000 people have received both two doses of the vaccine, but the U.S. trials kept out subjects who have had severe allergic reactions, said Moncef Slaoui, co-head of Operation Warp Speed – the government program tasked with developing, manufacturing and distributing COVID-19 vaccines.
Slaoui said he assumes that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration committee meeting Thursday will discuss this issue and will suggest that people with severe allergies “should not take the vaccine until we know exactly what happened.”
But a vaccine that triggers dangerous reactions in people with severe allergies poses a major challenge in the U.S., said Dr. Peter Hotez, a pediatrician and dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston.
“If you start issuing recommendations that anyone with an EpiPen doesn’t get vaccinated, that could be a showstopper for Americans,” he said. About 3 to 4 million Americans carry epinephrine with them at all times in case of allergic reactions, Hotez noted, and 50 million have less severe allergies.
The British Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) issued new advice to health care professionals stating that any person with a significant allergic reaction to a vaccine, medicine or food — such as previous history of anaphylactoid reaction, or those who have been advised to carry an adrenaline autoinjector — should not receive the Pfizer vaccine.
The advice also states that vaccines “should only be carried out in facilities where resuscitation measures are available.”
Bill Hudson began sharing his opinions in the Pagosa Daily Post in 2004 and can’t seem to break the habit. He claims that, in Pagosa Springs, opinions are like pickup trucks: everybody has one.