Photo credit Art Writ, Capital News Service
Virginia’s vaccine coordinator, Dr. Danny Avula, said Friday he expects about 213,000 COVID-19 vaccine doses to come to the state weekly, beginning next week. That’s an increase of about 60,000 doses from the past week.
Last week, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said the federal government would up weekly national distribution from 11 million doses to about 13.5 million doses, and also double the number of weekly doses sent directly to pharmacies, from 1 million to 2 million. That works out to 161,000 weekly doses to health districts, hospitals and other facilities in Virginia, Avula said, and the number of doses going to pharmacies for Virginians age 65 and older will grow from 26,000 a week to 52,000 weekly.
Avula said he anticipates “an explosion of vaccine” available in Virginia toward the end of April and early May, after Johnson & Johnson’s one-shot vaccine is approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration around early March, and more vaccine doses are produced by Pfizer Inc. and Moderna.
