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(WSYM) — In tonight’s 7 UpFront report we’re focusing on the drive to vaccinate people in our state in a timely manner to stop the spread of COVID-19 in Michigan.
We’re being joined by the newly appointed Director of Michigan Health and Human Services Elizabeth Hertel to talk about it.
“What we’re seeing is a great demand for the vaccine and we’re very happy about that, but that amount that we’ve been getting in since December isn’t enough to satisfy that demand,” Hertel says. “However, we’ve been working very closely with the Biden administration and we expect those allocations to continue to increase as we move through the spring and into the summer.”
“We have identified a number of sites across the state, TCF Center is one of those that have been set up, there are other large scale arenas in other areas that are ready to go,” she says. “We have the infrastructure there to do the mass vaccinations sites. We also have over 2,000 providers that are ready to start administering the vaccine when we start getting the quantities in that will start meeting that demand and I think that we have a really great infrastructure in place and ready to go when we see that quantity coming into Michigan.”
“We rely on our pharmacies heavily now to help us with our flu vaccination campaigns so they certainly are poised as providers in their communities to help implement this COVID vaccine strategy,” Hertel says.