Minnesota urges providers to offer doses to broader groups

Following significant changes in federal guidance on vaccine distribution earlier this week, the Minnesota Department of Health (MDH) today informed hospitals, health care systems and other vaccination partners that they can provide vaccines to broader categories of Minnesotans – including Minnesotans 65 years of age and older.

According to Minnesota Commissioner of Health Jan Malcolm, today’s announcement is designed to free health care providers and other vaccination partners to use all available doses as quickly as possible while still ensuring that doses are targeted to those most at need for protection from COVID-19.

“We are approaching the end of our earliest stages of the vaccine rollout, and we want to make sure all vaccines in the state are getting into arms as quickly as possible,” Commissioner Malcolm said. “The state is making sure that providers have nothing holding them back from immediately using any and all vaccine they have available. That said, the reality is that we have far more Minnesotans wanting the vaccine than we have doses available from the federal government. We are ready to get more vaccines out very quickly, but now we desperately need the federal government to step up and provide us with more vaccine.”

More information on the next phases of vaccine rollout will be announced in the coming days. Meanwhile, the state is urging the federal government to provide more vaccine immediately.

“It will be some time before the federal government provides our state with enough vaccine to cover all those currently eligible,” Commissioner Malcolm said. “Minnesota is ready to move on anything we get immediately, and we are working quickly to create new options for Minnesotans to schedule a vaccine. We’ll be sharing more details on this in the next few days.”

Minnesotans can find more vaccine information on the state’s COVID-19 Response website.

-MDH-