Gov. Andy Beshear and Dr. Steven Stack, commissioner of the Kentucky Department for Public Health, provided an update Monday on the COVID-19 vaccine and announced that Kentuckians will be inoculated in four phases.
Beshear said the state’s goal is to administer 90% of all vaccine doses received in the state within seven days of arrival and that the newly announced additional phases provide clarity on when more Kentuckians can get the vaccine. The phases also help providers understand in what order vaccines should be administered, which will help if they are having challenges meeting the 90% weekly goal or if they have extra thawed vaccine doses.
Beshear said 60,414 vaccine doses have already been administered in Kentucky. He added that 57,000 doses (27,300 from Pfizer and 29,700 from Moderna) will be delivered this week.
“We’ve got to get these things out faster. I’m not OK with the pace that they are currently being provided,” Beshear said. “We have too many people out there who are rightfully anxious, and they need to see this whole country pick up the pace. We are certainly going to do it here in Kentucky.”
The planned vaccination phases in Kentucky are:
Phase 1a: Long-term care facilities, assisted living facilities, health care personnel
Phase 1b: First responders, Kentuckians age 70 or older, K-12 school personnel
Phase 1c: Kentuckians age 60 or older, anyone older than 16 with CDC highest-risk conditions for COVID-19, all essential workers
Phase 2: Age 40 and older
Phase 3: Age 16 and older
Phase 4: Children under the age of 16 if the vaccine is approved for this age group (estimated to comprise 18% of Kentucky’s population)
“We are committed to getting this done quickly, efficiently and in the best way we know how and are able to deliver. We’re committed to ramping up the pace dramatically,” Stack said. “We’re asking every vaccination site to use the prioritization guidance and stick with that, but the top level goal is for every vaccine administration site in the state to administer 90% or more of the vaccine doses they receive within one week, so we don’t have vaccine doses waiting in a freezer until the next week.”
To view the CDC’s highest-risk conditions for COVID-19 or to view essential workers defined for these vaccination phases, click here.
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