VAIL, Colo. — As the country looks forward to a COVID-19 vaccine being widely available, state agencies in Colorado are ensuring they will be prepared to deliver doses of the eventual vaccine to distribution centers in the state.
On December 8, the Colorado Unified Coordination Center conducted a trial run in which they loaded a secure van with the mock Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine and drove it to Vail Health, which will be one of the state’s COVID-19 vaccine distribution sites.
In a press conference on December 9, Scott Bookman, the COVID-19 Incident Commander for the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment (CDPHE), said the initial doses of the real Pfizer vaccine are expected to arrive in Colorado in four to seven days. The state will receive between 46,000 and 47,000 doses. Because Colorado makes up about 1.7% of the country’s population, the state will receive 1.7% of the available vaccine doses.
You can watch a video of the trial run below:
After the dose of the mock Pfizer vaccine arrived at Vail Health, “it was transferred into the refrigerator and then removed for a practice injection,” according to the governor’s office. The end of the video shows a young woman receiving the mock vaccine in a shot to her arm.
The drill took four hours, start-to-finish.
The CDPHE recently detailed a three-phase vaccine distribution plan. The first phase, which will take place this winter, includes vaccinations for high-risk health care workers and individuals (and long-term care facility staff and residents), and then for moderate risk health care workers.
Phase two is scheduled for the spring. During this phase, “higher risk individuals and essential workers” will receive the vaccine. This includes, but is not limited to, people over the age of 65, workers serving people in high-density areas, and other health care workers not vaccinated in phase one.
The healthy, low-risk general population should not expect to be vaccinated until the summer, according to state public health experts. This will take place in phase three, in which “anyone aged 18-64 without high risk conditions” can get a vaccine.
“This vaccine is the gateway to a life without this crisis, but it will take time until everyone can access it because of the limited supply of vaccines so we must continue to do what we know works to slow the spread of the virus,” Governor Jared Polis said.
For now, only Coloradans ages 18 and older are accounted for in the vaccination plan. To date, very few children have been part of the clinical trials for the vaccine. More details on the state’s plan can be found here.
The current phased schedule is dependent on the supply chain of available vaccine doses remaining stable, Bookman added.
According to a recent poll from NPR, Marist Poll and PBS NewsHour, 61% of Americans said they would get a vaccine. That figure is up from just 49% in September.