Expected Coronavirus Vaccines Shipments To Illinois Cut In Half

CHICAGO — The federal government halved its estimate for the number of doses of Pfizer coronavirus vaccine it will deliver to Illinois and other states in the coming weeks, Gov. J.B. Pritzker announced Wednesday.

The news does not affect the initial shipment of 109,000 doses sent this week to Chicago and the state's strategic stockpile in Peoria to be distributed to local health departments via regional coordinating hospitals, according to the governor.

"Previously, federal authorities had notified us that they planned to ship near 8 million Pfizer vaccine doses to states, large cities and territories across the country next week," Pritzker said.

"However, as of this morning, I am disappointed to learn that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services informed us that, per the direction of Operation Warp Speed Gen. Perna, that estimate was tightened significantly down to 4.3 million doses shipped nationally next week," he said. "The following week originally projected for another 8.8 million doses is also now scheduled for 4.3 million doses."

Illinois Department of Public Health Director Dr. Ngozi Ezike said the evolving situation made it difficult to predict how many vaccines the state would be able to distribute this month.

"Our final numbers have not been concluded," Ezike said. "As the doses actually come in, that's when we can be guaranteed the actual numbers"

Ezike said she expects the first vaccinations of nursing home residents to begin the week of Dec. 28.

"That has been the plan, and that is still what we know of the plan," she said. "The only changes might occur, with these decreases in allocations, it might slow the process for the skilled nursing facilities, but again we have to wait for more information to see where that lands."

The governor noted that federal government officials made their own decisions about where to send shipments of the vaccine to Illinois this week. The state's strategic stockpile and the city of Chicago both received shipments Monday.

"I now no longer fully believe projections that are put in front of us by the federal government," Pritzker said. "Having said that, we're hopeful that they're accurate."

It was not clear Wednesday whether the other four shipments — slated for Cook County Department of Public Health as well as the Lake County, Madison County and St. Clair County health departments — had yet arrived. Likewise, it is unclear how many of the regional coordinating hospitals received their allocations, which are then set to be distributed to other local health departments.

"The federal government decided that they're not going to deliver directly to local public health departments other than to big cities, and they're not going to deliver directly to hospitals and rather just ship it to the state, and the state send it out," Pritzker said.

"So in our case, in the state of Illinois we have 97 local public health departments, one of which is the city of Chicago, but 96 others. And the Illinois Department of Public Health works together in collaboration with those 97 public health departments, but they're not controlled by the Department of Public Health at the state," he said. "So that collaboration, which is a good one and is ongoing for many years, does mean that Illinois has a different system perhaps, than some other states."

However, a spokesperson for St. Clair County Health Department said its shipment had been slated to go directly to the local regional hospital coordinating center, Memorial Hospital in Belleville. The spokesperson could not confirm whether it had yet been received as of Wednesday afternoon.

RELATED: Vaccine Shipments Not 'Delayed,' Hospitals 'Overly Excited,' Pritzker Says

Part of the challenge in the distribution of the Pfizer vaccine stems from the need to keep it in ultra-cold storage, according to Pritzker. He said he hoped shipments of the Moderna vaccine, if approved this week and shipped next week, would be easier for local public health departments to handle.

Ezike also addressed concerns that state officials in Illinois have not been vaccinating health care workers as fast as other states appear to have done this week. She urged the public to stay patient as public health officials manage the vaccine rollout.

"In terms of who's getting the vaccines and whether it happens on Monday or Friday, please understand the getting to the end of this pandemic is not going to be based on this part here, it's going to be when we get it to the masses in the back end," she said.

"Of course there's excitement, and we want it to happen as quickly as possible — but this is not going to make the pandemic end sooner because it happened on Monday instead of Friday, and what we're calling 'bureaucracy' is actually logistics for a very difficult product that no one has ever dealt with in the vaccine world and so we want to get this right, not just fast."

This article originally appeared on the Chicago Patch