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Colorado will get additional 9,000 vaccines a week from the Federal Government

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Posted at 11:56 AM, Feb 09, 2021
and last updated 2021-02-09 21:58:09-05

COLORADO SPRINGS — Gov. Jared Polis is providing an update on the state's response to COVID-19.

As of Tuesday morning, there are 934 new cases of COVID-19 in our state, and hospitalizations went down to the lowest they've been since early October, 464. A total of 559,938 first doses and 225,187 second doses have been administered to Coloradans.

Everyone who is 70 and up will be able to get the vaccine in February. The governor said we are 71-percent of the way to vaccinating 70-percent of those 70 and older by the end of February.

Monday was the first day for those 65 and older to get the vaccine. The governor estimates that those in the age group of 65-69 will be fully vaccinated sometime in early March.

Governor Polis also spoke with the White House this morning, and he relayed that they will be increasing vaccine supply by 9,000 doses per week. "Starting next week," said Polis, "We're very excited about that. At least for three weeks, so that means 27,000 additional vaccines over the next three weeks." The Federal supply chain also plans to start sending vaccines directly to community health clinics.

Governor Polis is excited that Colorado is in the top tier of states when it comes to quickly and efficiently administering the vaccines.

Wait times are down, but COcovidvaccine.org is the best way to get yourself on a waiting list. If necessary, call the COVID hotline for more information at 877-268-2926.

If you are an educator, contact your district. Governor Polis said educators will get vaccinated within the next three weeks.

"There are about 120,000 people eligible as educators to get the vaccine," said Polis. "We make sure that 90,000 to 100,000 are set aside for those educators. It is not taken away from those 70 and up."

The governor stresses that clinics and vaccine sites are only able to operate based on doses they are given each week. He says these sites could operate the entire week if they had more doses of the vaccine.

This follows his press conference where the Governor made big changes to the counties. The updated state COVID-19 dial went into effect Saturday morning, placing counties in new levels including El Paso, Pueblo, and Teller counties. El Paso and Teller Counties moved to level Yellow while Pueblo moved to level Blue.

Changes in the new dial include going by a 7-day instead of a 14-day metric. There are also some changes to capacity level caps.

In level Yellow, businesses can have up to 50% or 150 persons using a space calculator, this is a change from the 100 person cap.
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