Chicago Wants Pritzker to Move Some State Vaccine to City
Governor JB Pritzker said Thursday the state will work to get doses into the arms of Illinoisans as quickly as the federal government can provide them.
Governor JB Pritzker says the state is opening up 150,000 new first dose appointments for the COVID-19 vaccine in Cook and other collar counties as the state opens vaccine eligibility to everyone in the state 16-years-old and older.
“We’re at a point where the variants are rising, they’re coming at the population so fast, at every age. We need to make sure we open this up to everybody,” Pritzker said at a state vaccination site in Forest Park. “We now need to get as many shots into arms as quickly as we possibly can. We’re reserving some vaccine to make sure we’re targeting particularly vulnerable groups that aren’t fully vaccinated yet. Right now, we just want people to show up and get vaccinated as soon as possible.”
It isn’t clear yet whether the additional doses are coming from the federal government or if the state is reallocating supply from elsewhere.
According to the Chicago Tribune, Chicago Department of Health Commissioner Dr. Allison Arwady said the city has been pushing federal and state officials to ship vaccines that are going unused elsewhere in Illinois to the Chicago area because up there “the supply is just not meeting the demand yet.”
“I’m hopeful that it may come through, but we’ve not had any indication that it will at this point,” Arwady said about pleas for increased shipments.
A spokesperson for the Illinois Department of Public Health did not respond to a message about reallocation of doses from downstate.
As the state positivity rate continues to tick up, just shy of 5% Thursday, Pritzker said getting more people vaccinated as quickly as possible is the priority.
“Vaccine doses will be arriving more quickly than ever before and the public health system is doing everything in its power to get these vaccines into the arms of our residents as quickly as the federal government can deliver them,” he said.
The City of Chicago is not expanding eligibility for the entire 16-and-older population in the city until April 19. In the meantime, though, Pritzker says Chicago residents are “absolutely welcome” to get vaccinated in the suburbs or downstate.
