The general public in Wisconsin should not expect to receive a coronavirus vaccination until early summer. Governor Tony Evers said he doesn’t expect COVID-19 shots to be widely available until June.
“I know there are folks who say we should do that now. But if we do it now with the level of vaccine that we have available, we will just create mass chaos,” Julie Willems Van Dijk, Deputy Secretary of the state Department of Health Services said on Monday.
“Big long lines, crashed IT and phone systems, and that is not what we want to do with our health care providers, with our local health departments,” Willems Van Dijk said. “As I’ve said to many people, you’ve seen the scenes of grandmothers sitting in their lawn chairs waiting in line in Florida, and it’s a little cold in Wisconsin to sit in a lawn chair in a line right now.”
The Evers administration is asking the federal government to increase Wisconsin’s weekly allocation of of COVID-19 vaccine. “Last week we had more requests for vaccine from our vaccinators to immunize Phase 1A workers than we had vaccine to send them. We need more vaccine,” Willems Van Dijk said.
The next phase of the state’s vaccination effort phase 1B, calls for police and firefighters to begin receiving shots next Monday.