Media Contacts:
Taylor Gage, (402) 471-1970
Justin Pinkerman, (402) 471-1967
Governor's Media Release:
LINCOLN – This morning, Governor Pete Ricketts gave an update on coronavirus vaccination across the state. He noted that Nebraska administered over 14,000 vaccinations yesterday—the highest daily total so far. Nebraskans can register for vaccination at vaccinate.ne.gov or by calling (531) 249-1873.
Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) Incident Commander Angie Ling provided information on the upcoming allocations of vaccines the state is expected to receive. She also talked about the federal retail pharmacy program, which is scheduled to start next week.
Gov. Ricketts: Coronavirus Vaccination
- We continue to see a decline in coronavirus-related hospitalizations. Currently, we have 285 coronavirus hospitalizations. That's a decrease of more than 70% from our peak on November 20, 2020.
- Please continue to follow the protocols we've put out to slow the spread of the virus.
- We've begun to receive an increased amount of Moderna vaccines each week. We anticipate Pfizer being able to increase the amount it's supplying soon as well.
- So far, we've administered 97% of the first dose allocations we've received. That's a credit to the great work our local health departments have been doing to get vaccines in people's arms as quickly as possible. Nebraskans can track our progress by viewing the Vaccine Allocation Scorecard on the DHHS vaccine information page.
- All of our health departments are in Phase 1B now, which means they're focused on vaccinating older Nebraskans who are at higher risk from the virus.
Angie Ling: Coronavirus Vaccination
- This week, we received 11,700 Pfizer primary doses and 15,500 primary Moderna doses.
- Next week, we expect to receive another 11,700 Pfizer primary doses along with 17,000 first doses of the Moderna vaccine. We expect to receive this same quantity for the next three weeks.
- Each week, we're also receiving approximately 23,500 secondary vaccine doses. As the weeks continue, that number will increase in keeping with our vaccination schedule.
- The long-term care federal pharmacy program is returning its excess doses of vaccine to the state. CVS returned 5,850 doses this week. We'll receive 11,700 doses from Walgreens over the next few weeks as well.
- The federal retail pharmacy program is set to start in Nebraska next week. Vaccines administered through this federal program are in addition to the allocations received by the State.
- The pharmacies participating in the early stages of this program in Nebraska include select Walmart pharmacies and locally owned pharmacies that fall under the distributors of AmerisourceBergen drug company and Cardinal Health organizations.
- DHHS will provide information on the participating pharmacies as it becomes available.
- I encourage Nebraskans who've already received their first dose to come back in for their second dose as well. We want to make sure Nebraskans are fully inoculated.
Video from this morning's press conference is available by clicking here.