TACOMA — State health officials on Wednesday announced that the state of Washington had reached a milestone of COVID-19 vaccine doses administered to residents.
Secretary of Health Dr. Umair Shah announced that health officials have administered at least one dose of COVID-19 vaccines to 70 percent of the population ages 16 and older.
“We are almost at 8 million doses of vaccines that have been given to almost 4.3 million people across the state of Washington. That is an incredible amount of work and progress,” Shah said at Wednesday’s briefing.
Shah added, “I just want to remind everybody that we certainly have already met the national goal that the president and federal government had set for 70 percent of 18 and up receiving one dose, we had well exceeded that weeks ago, and certainly already, but we have now hit the 70% mark of the population receiving at least one dose above the age of 16.”
The goal was initially set for the state’s reopening, and separate from the Biden administration’s goal.
Shah made clear that while statewide the target was met for initial doses, different communities still lag behind, and some counties are still struggling with lower percentages of participation.
“We’re just shy of 4 million people being fully vaccinated,” he noted. “That represents almost half of our state, but that also means that half of our total population is still vulnerable, including … all of our kids who are under the age of 12 because they are not eligible for vaccines.”
“We have to continue to redouble our efforts to protect our youngest in our communities,” he added.
Clark County
In Clark County, 465,170 doses of a COVID-19 vaccine had been administered as of July 10. Some 61.5 percent of residents 16 and older — almost 255,00 — have had at least one vaccine; 230,309 residents, or 56 percent, have been fully vaccinated.
