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Credit: Phil Roeder via Flickr
Historic cold and winter storms in the central and southern United States are impacting the distribution of the COVID vaccine as appointments at six sites in Minnesota are postponed.
The state of Minnesota said it had to reschedule appointments and two community vaccination sites on Thursday, and four more sites on Friday.
The affected sites are in St. Cloud, Rochester Willow Creek (rescheduled Thursday and Friday), Minneapolis, Fergus Falls, North Mankato and Thief River Falls.
Anyone with an appointment at these locations is contacted to inform them that the postponement is postponed, and they will respond to you within 24-48 hours about the postponement “as soon as possible”.
MDH told Bring Me The News that if some affected people wait for their second dose, “it’s okay if the second dose is a bit delayed” and they don’t need to restart the vaccine series.
“The state is closely monitoring the situation and will provide these doses to Minnesotans as soon as possible once the federal government confirms the date of arrival of the vaccine in Minnesota,” added a spokesperson.
It comes as a deep freeze continues to impact many states, including Oklahoma and Texas, causing blackouts, power outages and gas shortages in large areas of the country.
The Minnesota Department of Health said one of the deadly winter storm victims has delayed the federal government shipping part of this week’s COVID-19 delivery to Minnesota.
The ministry says it is in “close contact” with the CDC, but warned that “further shipping delays could cause significant operational challenges for state sites and other vendors.”
Minnesota launched a new service called the Vaccine Connector on Thursday, which people can sign up for to be notified when they qualify for a vaccine and when there is one near them.
Earlier this week, St. Louis County announced that it had been forced to cancel COVID vaccine appointments due to supply issues caused by winter storms.
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