ILLINOIS (WAND) - Gov. JB Pritzker said in his Nov. 30 COVID-19 press conference a vaccine could be distributed in as soon as two weeks.
Pfizer has a meeting with advisors at the FDA on Dec. 10, and if emergency use authorization is approved, they could be rolling out vaccines in the following few days. If Illinois does get vaccines quickly after the 10th, the first shipment will be small, Pritzker said.
“I also want to remind you that very few vaccines, vaccinations will be able to be given right after Pfizer delivers these vaccines”, Pritzker said.
He acknowledged that there was a shipment that came from Chicago on Saturday, but said he believes they are just being brought to a Pfizer ultra-low temperature warehouse near Kenosha. Those have not been distributed.
In the press conference, IDPH Director Dr. Ngozi Ezike said that Illinois may be receiving both vaccines - Moderna and Pfizer - when they are both approved. She said the state will be working with local health officials to determine where to place each vaccine according to accessibility and dose number.
Current mitigations could change when the vaccine becomes more widely available, but Pritzker said he has no date for changing the mitigations according to vaccinations yet.
"We're trying to get the infection rate down and so we will be following those infection numbers every day, the testing numbers every day. Again, the numbers that are gonna show up in the next 10 to 15 days are very small," Pritzker said.
He says he has seen different estimations on future dose distribution shipment numbers, but reminds people that for the number he’ll eventually get, half of that number represents people who will get the vaccine. It may look like more, but Pritzker reminds people that the vaccines are 2-dose vaccines.
