State health secretary aims to get most Washingtonians vaccinated by fall classes

Washington State Secretary of Health Dr. Umair Shah knows the question on many peoples’ mind: “When am I going to get vaccinated against Covid-19?”

The vaccines are going to take time to get into the arms of low-risk members of the general public, he said in an interview with KUOW.

“My goal is that we have enough Washingtonians vaccinated so that by the time our kids are trying to go back to school in the fall, they can go back safely; that enough adults have been vaccinated, that we can get our kids back to school safely, in-person, in the fall,” Shah said.

According to Appendix C of a recent state report, everyone between the ages of 16 and 69 in Washington who do not have a health condition, an “essential job,” or live or work in a risky setting, may be able to get vaccinated starting in July under the state’s “highly illustrative and very likely to change” best guess.

That’s assuming that another vaccine against Covid, in addition to the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, is also available by then.

Previously, officials with the Department of Health had estimated that Washington state would be done with vaccinating the first high-risk groups by mid-January.

“We expect we’ll have enough doses into January to vaccinate that whole group,” Acting Assistant Secretary Michele Roberts said December 9 at a weekly media briefing.

Currently, the state is just over halfway done vaccinating the approximately 450,000 people in that group, according to state data.

At this point, it’s going to take a many more venues – and types of venues – administering the vaccinations to massively ramp up the state’s numbers, Shah said.

From places people are getting vaccinated now, such as hospitals and clinics, to vaccinations in workplaces, to “alternative mechanisms” such as mass vaccination systems. Planning is happening behind the scenes to get neighborhood pharmacies involved in Covid vaccine administration too, he said.

That will happen “days to weeks” from now, Shah said, but could not provide an exact timeline or number of doses of Covid vaccines that would be available at your local pharmacy.

A limiting factor continues to be the inconsistent flow of vaccine doses from the federal government, Shah said. That makes it more difficult for hospitals and other healthcare providers to plan for distribution and schedule people to come for shots.

“We only know for next week, what our supply is,” he said “We don't know two weeks from now.”