Gov. Phil Murphy took a tour
this morning of one of the six New Jersey mega-vaccine sites, set up for mass
vaccinations against COVID-19, at the New Jersey Convention and Exposition Center
in Edison.
There are three other sites
in Atlantic, Bergen and Burlington counties. In all, vaccines are available at
more than 100 locations across the state, but people need an appointment as
well as fit the eligibility requirements that were expanded earlier in the week
to include anyone over 65 or those under 65 with a chronic condition. The
governor, still, admits there’s a long way to go.
“We still don’t have enough
supply out of the feds,” says Gov. Murphy. “We take some solace on the
projections particularly now that the Biden team are making in terms out of supply
out of the feds.”
But
he remains hopeful. He says with the proper infrastructure in place and five
other mega vaccination sites already up and running, as well as an additional
100 vaccine locations around the state, New Jersey will be ready once there are
enough available doses for everyone.
“I
think if we get the manufacturing that they are expecting to get on both the
current vaccines, as well as we’re not really giving ourselves any amount of
degrees of freedom from vaccines that are not yet approved with their emergency
use authorization which could include, by the way, New Jersey’s own Johnson and
Johnson,” says Gov. Murphy.
The state says more than
300,000 total vaccine doses have been administered so far, with the majority
being first doses.
“We
cracked through 300,000 shots in the arm yesterday afternoon and it’s going up
by the minute,” says Gov. Murphy.
Gov. Murphy has said for
people who want to get a shot to be patient. They probably won’t be available
to the general public until April or May.