Oregon’s Vaccination Rate Is Among the Nation’s Lowest So Far, Bloomberg Reports

State officials acknowledge a slow start but say the pace of vaccination should increase soon.

Thirteen OHSU staff who work at the hospital’s drive-through COVID-19 testing site at Hillsboro Stadium received their first dose of the Pfizer BioNtech COVID-19 vaccine on Dec. 18, 2020. (OHSU/Josh Andersen)
By Nigel Jaquiss

Oregon is among the slowest states at getting the newly released COVID-19 vaccines into its residents' arms.

That's according to a Dec. 29 report by Bloomberg, which is tracking vaccine rollouts across the country using data from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

"The CDC's latest tally, as of Monday, showed that despite the distribution of 11.45 million doses from Moderna Inc., and from Pfizer Inc. and BioNTech SE, just 2.13 million people had gotten shots," Bloomberg reported. "That represents about 20% of early allocations. Oregon has used only 15.3% of its supply, Ohio 14.3% and Maryland 10.9%."

Tim Heider, a spokesman for the Oregon Health Authority, acknowledged the state got off to a slow start, but he says performance should improve.

"Initial startup of vaccine distribution took some time, but now things are running smoothly and vaccine provider sites around the state are vaccinating more people per hour," Heider said in a statement.

"We do have enough vaccine this month to vaccinate 100,000 people, although we don't anticipate actually vaccinating that number of people in the next couple days; that probably will take a couple more weeks. As we go forward we will have more outlets for people to get the vaccine, like local public health departments and eventually pharmacies. So we expect that the velocity of vaccination will increase."

The Oregon Health Authority's vaccination resources, including answers to frequently asked questions and a dashboard showing the number of daily vaccinations, can be found here.

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