St. Joseph County Health officials anticipate more vaccine availability

SOUTH BEND, Ind. --- St. Joseph County Health Department officials are anticipating receiving more doses of the two approved COVID-19 vaccines in the next two weeks. This expanded access comes after the Trump Administration decided to release all available vaccines to states instead of storing some for second doses.

"It should increase the allocation that we receive locally and we’ll just need to scale up our operations so we can have more people vaccinating so we can get more people their shots," said St. Joseph County Deputy Health Officer Dr. Mark Fox. 

Many in charge of the vaccine roll out at the national level have been raising concerns about the speed at which vaccines were being administered, but Dr. Fox says that's not necessarily the case in St. Joseph County.

"I know both St. Joe Health System and the county health department are eager to receive more vaccine," said Fox. "We feel like we can increase the capacity and increase the output if we had more vaccine available."

Fox says he also doesn't believe releasing all available doses of the vaccine will lead to a shortage by the time people would need to receive their second dose.