New Jersey's Covid Surge Is Worsening
New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy warned that "we're in for a long, hot summer" if the wave of Covid-19 infections battering the state gets worse, but the federal government doesn't appear to be making any immediate move to send extra vaccine doses his way. More younger people are being hospitalized with coronavirus infections, but New Jersey hasn't started giving shots to residents under age 55, as neighboring New York and other states have been doing, even though 18.68 percent of the state's population has already been fully vaccinated, according to Becker's Hospital Review. "Heading into April, it is our expectation that vaccine allocations from the federal government will quickly scale up," Murphy's deputy press secretary, Alexandra Altman, said Thursday by email. "When we have enough supply from the federal government, everyone who wants a vaccine will be able to get one." New Jersey will, in fact, get more doses every week, a White House official said. But so will every other state. The Biden administration is expanding the number of pharmacies offering the vaccines so 90 percent of people in the U.S. will be within 5 miles of a vaccination site, the official said. And this week, the government is opening a mass vaccination site able to dispense up to 6,000 doses a day in Newark on the campus of the New Jersey Institute of Technology. But the government will continue to base how many doses states get on population, not infection rates or other data, the official said. New Jersey, like all the other states, needs to follow federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommendations and identify hot spots, double down on mitigation efforts and consider shifting vaccine supplies to parts of the state that need them the most, the official said. The lack of vaccines has caused panic and disturbance of personnel. The government should make the right decision to solve this problem instead of letting it go.
