During Friday’s briefing, Gov. Justice said that he and other state pandemic response leaders are “pushing as hard as we can” – urging the federal government to supply more doses of the COVID-19 vaccines to West Virginia.
“We’re going through every channel we can go through,” said Gov. Justice, who participated in a national COVID-19 leadership call on Wednesday with members of President Joe Biden’s administration, other governors across America, United States COVID-19 Czar Jeff Zients, and others.
“One thing that I cannot get straight in my head is you have states all across this country that have hundreds of thousands or millions of vaccines that are not in somebody’s arm, they’re in a warehouse,” Gov. Justice continued. “Hours mean something – not days, weeks, or months – hours mean something to try to save somebody’s life.”
According to the latest numbers posted to the CDC’s National Vaccination Tracker, out of the 57.4 million vaccine doses that have been delivered to states across America, only 35.2 million have been administered to date; an overall administration rate of 61.2 percent. Meanwhile, West Virginia has successfully administered 294,059 of the 328,600 total doses that have been delivered in the state to date; an overall administration rate of 89.4 percent.
“There’s more than 20 million vaccines in our nation, right now, that aren’t in someone’s arm,” Gov. Justice said. “I just haven’t been able to break through yet on the fact that we ought to be going and getting some of those vaccines and moving them around the chess board to states that are out of vaccines or states that are absolutely good at what they’re doing, and there’s none better than our health people, our national guard, and all the great people that are doing this in West Virginia.
“But we’re pushing,” Gov. Justice continued. “And we’re going to keep pushing just as hard as we can.”
