MN Offering Coronavirus Vaccines To More Eligible Residents

TWIN CITIES, MN — The Minnesota Department of Health Thursday announced that hospitals, health care systems, and other vaccination partners should start vaccinating "broader categories of Minnesotans," including all residents of the state who are 65 and older.

State Commissioner of Health Jan Malcolm wants health care providers and other vaccination partners to use "all available doses as quickly as possible" while still targeting people put most at risk by the coronavirus.

"We are approaching the end of our earliest stages of the vaccine rollout, and we want to make sure all vaccines in the state are getting into arms as quickly as possible," Malcolm said in a news release.

"The state is making sure that providers have nothing holding them back from immediately using any and all vaccine they have available. That said, the reality is that we have far more Minnesotans wanting the vaccine than we have doses available from the federal government. We are ready to get more vaccines out very quickly, but now we desperately need the federal government to step up and provide us with more vaccine."

As Minnesota nears completion of the first round of vaccinations, state leaders are urging the federal government to provide more vaccine doses immediately.

"It will be some time before the federal government provides our state with enough vaccine to cover all those currently eligible," Malcolm continued.

"Minnesota is ready to move on anything we get immediately, and we are working quickly to create new options for Minnesotans to schedule a vaccine. We’ll be sharing more details on this in the next few days."

In Minnesota, more than 153,000 residents have had at least one vaccine dose. Just over 15,000 have received both doses necessary to achieve immunity to the virus.

This article originally appeared on the Southwest Minneapolis Patch