NEW ORLEANS – The extreme weather is injecting delays in the COVID-19 vaccine shipments coming to Louisiana.
Louisiana was supposed to get around 80,000 doses this week, but the majority are delayed because of icy and snowy weather across the country.
The state is asking for patience while COVID-19 vaccines trickle into distribution sites.
Dr. Joseph Kanter with the Louisiana Department of Hospital said, “Some were only delayed a day, some are being delayed until tomorrow and some might not get here until Friday or Saturday.”
Dr. Kanter said while some appointments are being rescheduled, it’s hard to know the exact number of people impacted. A number of vaccine providers are using leftover stock from last week to offset some of the delays.
“Be in close contact with whatever clinic, pharmacy or hospital you were planning to get vaccinated at and they should have a sense of when they expect their shipment to come in,” Dr. Kanter said. “If it does need to be delayed, they’ll let you know when they can realistically reschedule it.”
Dr. Kanter recommends to still get the second dose when it’s available.
“We want the second dose to happen as close to the 21st day for Pfizer or the 28 day mark for Moderna as possible, but if it doesn’t happen exactly on that day for whatever reason it’s not the end of the world. It’s still beneficial to get it.”
The state is still working to determine if any doses were lost because of power outages at some distribution sites. There is some concern vaccines could have gone outside of temperature range.
On Thursday, Governor Edwards will update the state on the fight against COVID-19. His news conference will be streamed on WGNO.com and WGNO’s social media pages.