New Jersey will open six vaccine “mega sites” in January, serving the state’s efforts to vaccinate 70% of the population within six months, Gov. Phil Murphy announced Friday.
The sites will be distributed across the state and will be in place to support ongoing efforts to vaccinate primary care health workers early in the new year.
Judy Persichilli, New Jersey’s health commissioner, said Friday that the state’s efforts to rapidly vaccinate an estimated 4.7 million Garden State residents depend on the availability of vaccines.
“We expect demand to outweigh supply,” she said.
Persichilli said the federal government’s supply of doses has already fallen short of expectations.
“The previously expected second tranche of Pfizer doses for next week was expected to be 86,775,” she said. “Now, based on what has been entered into the federal ‘Tiberius’ platform, we see that we expect only 53,625. That’s a 38% reduction.”
Persichilli added that the total expected dosages to be delivered to New Jersey in the month of December have been revised down by 33%, according to the federal database.
Murphy said he did not yet have a satisfactory reason why New Jersey, along with every other state, was scheduled to receive fewer doses of the Covid-19 vaccine than initially expected.
“I spoke to Pfizer,” he said. “They have no idea why this is being done.”
“Pfizer said to me personally, ‘we want you to know this is not us,’” said Murphy, adding that he will come forward during a phone call with the White House this weekend.
New Jersey reported a further 3,975 infections on Friday, along with 44 deaths. Hospital admissions fell for the second day in a row, with at least 3,582 patients admitted to hospital with confirmed or suspected Covid-19 as of Thursday night.
“These numbers are starting to move in the right direction, and that’s a decline,” Murphy said before adding, “two days is certainly not a trend.”
Note: These numbers have been released by the New Jersey Health Authority and may not match exactly in real time with CNN’s database taken from Johns Hopkins University and the Covid Tracking Project.