Winter weather delays Colorado’s vaccine shipment

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (KKTV) - Colorado’s vaccine shipment has been delayed this week because of winter storms across the U.S.

About 133,000 vaccines allocated for Colorado were expected to arrive between Tuesday and Thursday.

The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment says the storms have affected a vaccine distribution hub in Tennessee. Shipments to several other states have also been delayed. Colorado, other jurisdictions and federal entities were impacted because of weather issues at vaccine hubs.

On Tuesday night, KKTV was able to confirm that 45,000 vaccines initially thought to be delayed were in fact sent out before the bad weather impacted the shipment.

Included in those were all of Pueblo and El Paso counties allotment for the week.

“Those were the ones that were effected, but we got great news that they are shipped and we’re making sure that doses are in hand,” said Brigadier Gen. Scott Sherman, director of Colorado’s Vaccine Distribution Joint Task Force.

He confirms around 88,000 doses are still delayed because of the bad weather.

CDPHE is working with Colorado’s health care providers and local public health agencies across the state to make sure appointments and clinics do not need to be canceled in the next week. Colorado requested and received its scheduled doses for this week last Friday in anticipation for the President’s Day holiday weekend.

The state says the decision helped have enough on hand to work with providers to move doses to prevent canceling vaccination appointments.

Colorado expects more information about when the doses will arrive as the weather moves out and shipping resumes.