Demand for COVID-19 vaccines in Ingham County has steeply declined in recent weeks.
Ingham County Health Officer Linda Vail describes the dropoff in the number of vaccination appointments as “dramatic," adding "at one point in time we were up to 10, 11, 12,000 scheduled appointments in a week. This week, we are anticipating 5,851.”
Still, the county is ordering more vaccine. Pfizer’s vaccine may soon be approved for children as young as 12, and that would likely lead to an uptick in demand.
Vail has decided to order more vaccine even though the department doesn’t currently need it. “At this point in time," she explains, "we are going to have enough vaccine on hand that, whether the state sends us more, or there’s something goes wrong with the manufacturing where they had to throw out millions of doses, those sorts of things, that we won’t be impacted like that.”
Vail says the county is likely to not ask for more vaccine in the coming weeks.
There currently are 132 COVID-19 cases in Lansing’s two major hospitals, down from more than 200 a few weeks ago.
