INGHAM COUNTY, Mich. – Hundreds of thousands of the COVID-19 vaccine sit idle in freezers around the state, but not in Ingham County.
“We are vaccinating roughly 350 a day,” County Health Officer Linda Vail.
Vail said when they open appointments, they fill them.
“We only had 40 appointments scheduled. So I said, ‘Well, it’s time to let law enforcement and fire departments know that it’s coming’ and that filled up and we vaccinated 410 people,” she said. “What I told the state last week was ‘If you give me enough vaccine, I can do 1,000 a day.’”
The Michigan Department of Health and Human Services said every entity that gets a delivery of the vaccine has been told to try and administer 90% of it within a week of getting it.
As for the numbers showing that Michigan overall is struggling to vaccinate, Vail thinks there could be a discrepancy.
“If you look at the dashboards and things like that, it’ll show you that we’ve administered a couple 1,000 doses in Ingham County, and that number is closer to 7,500 as of yesterday. So when we look at what is being reported, that is happening in the state, I just have to wonder if those numbers are also woefully inaccurate,” she said.