AUGUSTA, Maine — Maine administered a record number of vaccine doses last week with a higher-than-normal supply of Johnson & Johnson doses.
According to data from the Maine CDC, vaccinators put 120,799 doses in arms from April 4 to April 10 for the 17th week of distribution.
Maine CDC Director Dr. Nirav Shah tweeted Monday morning looking at the seven-day stretch from last Monday, April 5, to April 12.
"Last week, our state administered 125,176 doses. 70,509 were final doses. That's 70K people who, in 2 weeks, will be fully vaccinated. Put differently, 5.25% of the entire *state* got vaccinated last week," Shah said in a Tweet.
"#Maine is administering an average of 17,882 doses/day now, or 1330 doses/day per 100K people. That will likely come down this week since we are receiving much less @JNJNews vaccine. #COVID19 #vaccine," he continued.
More than one in three Maine people age 16 and older have gotten a final dose.
But for the week of April 12, Maine is seeing a drastic drop in doses. Maine will receive 2,500 doses of J&J for the Maine Immunization Program, compared to 20,600 last week, and retail pharmacy partners will receive 58 percent fewer total doses, 14,420 total compared to 34,190 the week before.
"These fluctuations in supply are somewhat temporary. We hope, we anticipate, we've been told the J&J supply will, in fact, increase by the end of the month," Maine CDC Director Dr. Nirav Shah said on Thursday, April 8, during a media briefing.
At that time, he was not aware of the allocations to FRPP locations.
"It's not desirable. It's not ideal whatsoever," Shah said. "We recognize a lot of those groups were anticipating, banking on the fact, that they were going to get doses so they could vaccinate their patients, their constituents, would that were the case, I wish we had more supply coming in."