Wisconsin vaccine rollout critiqued amid slow distribution complaints

(WLUK) -- CDC data shows Wisconsin still lags behind most other states with administering coronavirus vaccines.

The plan for handing out COVID-19 vaccines has come under fire.

And that’s at the local state and federal levels.

If you had to give a letter grade to the current COVID-19 vaccine rollout, what would that letter grade be?

"There’s a lot of factors in that letter grading system."

That’s Doug Gieryn, Winnebago County Health Department director and public health officer.

While he says the state needs more of the COVID-19 vaccine, Gieryn adds getting people vaccinated efficiently is more than making sure there’s enough to go around.

"If we open it up to multiple groups at one time, we really end up creating a competition system. If people are trying to get vaccine from five different places and getting on five different lists, it does decrease the efficiency of the rollout," Gieryn said.

Another factor to consider is how many vaccines are on hand compared to what counties planned for.

Prevea’s Dr. Ashok Rai makes that easier to chew on with a bakery analogy.

"It’s a set large pie coming in and it’s the same pie coming in every week and it’s not increasing yet we are trying to vaccinate more people in the state of Wisconsin, and having more sites opened up, it just dilutes everybody’s share of that pie," Dr. Rai said.

So far, the rollout is an attempt to ration the number of doses on hand and spread them out between the groups of people who need it most.

The first group was made up of front-line workers like your nurse and first responders, plus nursing home residents.

Now, the state is getting to work vaccinating the second group, people 65 and up.

But how those doses are divvied up come with strongholds too.

"It continues to keep us held back, the number of doses that we have tied up in the pharmacy program for long term care and the cadence ith which that program is running. It's 200,000 doses and as of last week that was almost a third of our doses," Wisconsin Department of Health Services Deputy Secretary Julie Willems Van Dijk said.

Between limited supply, creating a priority list as doses show up, and months until the general public can get their shot, some are frustrated with the vaccine’s rollout.

So as for that grade,

"I’d say id give us a B for handling what we’ve got, but more like a D for the flow of vaccines from the feds to the state," Gieryn said.

Health leaders expect efficiency to trickle down.

It just has to start at the top.