LYNNWOOD, Wash. — The supply of COVID-19 vaccine is noticeably decreasing as the State of Washington just made another 1.5 million people eligible on Thursday.
“We had believed, that the supply would have been increasing, at the time that eligibility was increasing. In fact, the supply has decreased,” said Dr. Jeff Duchin, health officer for Seattle-King County Public Health. “In fact this week, 'Vax Day' week, we have fewer doses than we had two weeks ago. And we expect next week we will have fewer doses than we had two weeks ago.”
Duchin says the weekly supply that had been around 100,000 first doses had been cut by as much as a third. King County had only received 79,000 first doses this week, down from last week, when the county got 118,000 doses. That's a drop of around 40,000 doses.
Washington State Department of Health handles most of the dose distribution in Washington. The state in turn depends on allocations from the federal government.
"We have always said that vaccine allocation forecasts we receive from the federal government are estimates that can change, and they often do,” said Department of Health spokeswoman Shelby Anderson in an email.
The number of doses is forecast to go up over the next few weeks, but not dramatically. The state expects 364,700 doses of Pfizer and Moderna vaccines starting the week of April 18; 370,340 for the week starting April 25; and 377,360 the week of May 2.
A month ago the Department of Health forecast that it was expecting 600,000 doses by this time, which would include the direct federal distribution through local pharmacies.
However, statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show the vast majority of doses being administered in Washington and most states are going through state and local jurisdictions.
At the Lumen Field Exhibition hall, site of the largest mass vaccination site in the state if not the country, only 2,400 doses were given out on the first day everyone in the state 16 and up became eligible. The massive site operated by the city of Seattle and Swedish Medical Center has the capacity for 22,000 shots each day.
Its highest daily total was on Wednesday, April 7, with 8,000 doses.
The lack of shots is not the fault of the federal pause on the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, after health officials investigated reports of blood clots in six women nationwide who received that vaccine.
So far, the state says J&J only accounted for about 4,300 doses a week. The state had expected J&J to ramp up and manufacture 100 million doses by the end of May, said the Department of Health.
