COVID VACCINE ROLLOUT

With Michigan set to expand who can get the COVID-19 vaccine next week, local health departments, which are already struggling to make sure those most at-risk get vaccinated, will have more on their plate. READ: Michigan to expand COVID-19 vaccine plan to include residents age 50 and olderHackel has been a critic of the state’s vaccine rollout. He said Macomb County can do as many vaccinations as the entire state is doing daily, but the supply has been limited. Ad“Our health departments have been cautioning against this for the past several months, begging for more vaccines. Officials with Wayne, Oakland and Washtenaw county health departments could not be reached for comment.

Shortly after former Michigan Department of Health and Human Services Director Robert Gordon abruptly resigned on Jan. 22, Elizabeth Hertel was named the new director. Gretchen Whitmer appointed Hertel minutes after Gordon tweeted his resignation. “Our real challenge, the real barrier right now, is the number of vaccines we have actually coming in to the state. We have a lot of the infrastructure, the providers to be able to do the vaccine administration all over the state. “We’ve been working actively with both the local health departments and the hospital systems across the state to bring them together for that sort of coordination between the health systems and the local health departments,” Hertel said.