MADISON (WKOW) -- Following Thursday's announcement all adults in Minnesota will be eligible for the COVID-19 vaccine starting next week, each of the four states bordering Wisconsin have committed to opening up the vaccine to the general public no later than April 12.
Department of Health Services officials, however, said Thursday they currently have no plans of making all Wisconsin adults eligible prior to May 1.
DHS leaders said in a press call comparing Wisconsin to neighboring states would be like comparing "apples and oranges," citing different demographic and vaccine supply situations between states.
Still, despite the demographic and supply variations between Illinois, Iowa, Michigan, and Minnesota, each of those states are currently committed to opening up vaccinations to all adults nearly three weeks earlier than Wisconsin.
DHS Deputy Secretary Julie Willems Van Dijk said the agency first wanted to monitor the rollout among adults with pre-existing health conditions, who just became eligible on Monday; it's a group health officials said could include more than two million people.
"We certainly want to give time for folks with these chronic diseases to get into the vaccine system, to make appointments," Van Dijk said.
Wisconsin has made continuing progress on vaccinating more of the state's population. Last week was the first week in which vaccinators across the state administered more than 300,000 doses.
More than half of the state's adults 65 and older have completed the vaccine series, according the DHS dashboard.
Van Dijk said the other issue keeping DHS from opening up eligibility to all Wisconsin adults is supply.
"We'd like to see a little more than that before we're ready to move to move to the general population," she said.
Van Dijk said the agency was optimistic about supply increases, noting this upcoming week is slated to bring Wisconsin its largest weekly allocation yet; it includes about 35,000 doses of the single-shot Johnson & Johnson vaccine.
Between both vaccines and ongoing public health precautions like mask-wearing and social distancing, Van Dijk urged patience, saying if the vaccine rollout were a baseball game, the country would be in the third inning.
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March 26, 2021 at 06:42AM
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As border states move up vaccine eligibility, DHS sticks to May 1 date - WKOW
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