Dr. Tracie Collins, Secretary-Designate of the Department of Health, gave an update on vaccines in New Mexico.
A total of 107,300 doses have been delivered to New Mexico and 78,143 have been administered as of January 11. Over 32,000 of those doses happened in the past week. At this point over 81% of providers are reporting their data. That is an increase of 6% from the reporting percentage Collins spoke about last week.
"According to the CDC, New Mexico has one of the highest administration rates in the country," Collins said.
Collins also talked about the vaccine website, which can be found here or here.
"Within the last two weeks, almost 400,000 New Mexicans registered," she said. "We encourage all of you to register to get in the queue and they will follow up to make an appointment."
Collins reminds New Mexicans that they can update their profiles at any time, and that registering helps hold a spot in line as vaccines become available in the user's area.
To learn more about the vaccine distribution plan visit here.
New Mexico is currently in phase 1B, those that are over 75 years of age and New Mexicans over the age of 16 that have at lease one underlying condition.
Collins said they will move through the phases sequentially, so the intent will be to administer doses to as many people in each subgroup of phase 1A, then the first subgroup of 1B, and continue through the list.
A full list of chronic conditions is listed here, the more common being cancer, chronic kidney issues, immune deficiency, asthma, obesity, and hypertension.
Collins said the distribution plan was put together with guidance from the CDC, but tailored to the needs of New Mexico. "In New Mexico, a large proportion of the population has one or more chronic conditions," she said.
Some people have experienced difficulty with both the website and the hotline. As for the website, "Now, when it is time - and when there is availability - a message is sent to the user so they know where to go." Collins said the supply is not always available, but to exercise patience because the system will contact people as the doses are available in the appropriate areas.
Collin said the hotline is expanding resources to help ease any delays. "We know there was a wait, even in just getting through. We added more staff over the weekend. We are monitoring call volumes so we can increase capacity and meet the need."
Collins said every effort is being made to ensure doses are not wasted. If a provider has more doses than they need they will notify the next set of eligible registered users in their area. At this time no doses have been wasted in New Mexico.
"We encourage everyone to be patient, and register. We started in phase 1A and now we are in 1B. Please register and get yourself in line to get vaccinated," Collins said.