Nearly A Quarter Of Hawaii’s Vaccine Shipments Are Delayed, Health Officials Say
The state now expects it will receive a reduced total of 61,450 doses of the COVID-19 vaccines by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna by year’s end.
Nearly a quarter of the COVID-19 vaccine doses expected to arrive in Hawaii before the year’s end will not arrive until after the new year begins, Hawaii health regulators announced on Thursday.
The state now anticipates it will receive a total of 61,450 vaccine doses by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna before the end of the year, down from the 81,825 doses it previously expected to receive. The rest of the vaccine doses will arrive on a delayed schedule sometime after Jan. 1.
The reason for the delay is that the federal effort to deliver the COVID-19 vaccine across the country — popularly known as Operation Warp Speed — is lagging, the Hawaii Health Department said.
As of Thursday evening more than 9,000 COVID-19 vaccines have been administered in to the arms of Hawaii residents statewide, the Health Department said.
All told, 33,450 vaccine doses of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines have been received by the state.
Thousands more doses should arrive next week, according to the DOH.
