Idaho Department of Health and Welfare gives a vaccine distribution update

BOISE, Idaho (KMVT/KSVT) — The Idaho Department of Health and Welfare expects to have received a total of 163,975 doses of the COVID-19 vaccine by the end of the week.

This is an increase of about 9,000 from a week ago. All of the new doses will be the Moderna vaccine.

The department said last week there was a 48% increase in doses administered, compared to the previous week.

However, officials said figuring out how popular the vaccine has been amongst teachers and frontline workers added in the last weeks won’t be easy to estimate because the state doesn’t collect that information. However, the department said there are no issues with and leftover vaccine.

“Our problem right now is demand far exceeds supply and so there are many, many, many hundreds, thousands of thousands of people that are anxious to get vaccinated, and there’s been no disruption in that demand of people wanting to get vaccinated,” said Director of the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare Dave Jeppesen. “Our struggle has been on the supply side.”

The department expects the number of vaccine doses Idaho sees to increase from 2%-5% each week.

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