GREEN BAY, Wis (NBC 26) -- Today Governor Tony Evers visited Green Bay to tour what's now one of the largest COVID-19 vaccination sites in the state. The clinic at UWGB opened on Monday as firefighters and police started receiving COVID-19 vaccinations for the first time.
For months at UWGB, local healthcare workers have been testing the general public for COVID-19. But within the next few weeks, the hope is to shift much of their efforts to vaccinations.
"We want our vaccination sites to be even better than our testing sites. So we're looking forward to working and the only reason it works is because we have great medical leaders," says UW System President Tommy Thompson.
Prevea Health and the UW System's goal is to start vaccinating about 10-thousand people a week for the first three weeks at UWGB. Health leaders say following the three-week roll-out they would like to ramp up those efforts at other UW-Systems in Sheboygan and Marinette to about 20-thousand people a week being vaccinated.
"We hope that the federal government will continue to provide us with the vaccine supply to meet us with the goal of administering as many vaccines as we can across the entire state of Wisconsin," says Dr. Ashok Rai the President and CEO of Prevea.
Right now the state reports they have allocated about 600-thousand doses worth of vaccines and have administered just over 239-thousand doses. On Monday Governor Evers said hopefully health care leaders can get access to more vaccines, soon.
"I believe the Biden administration understands the importance of this. We will get the vaccines that we need."
This new site is believed to be one of the largest vaccination clinics in the state. And while it will start running at about 50 percent of its capacity for the first several weeks, many are optimistic that more vaccines will be made available soon and the clinic can run at full throttle.
"I am looking forward to the day that we can say everybody is vaccinated and we're going to do our damnedest to make that happen as quickly as we can," adds Governor Evers.
