TOPEKA, Kan. — Kansas has requested less than 9% of its federal allocation of COVID-19 vaccine doses for this week, as Republican state lawmakers try to revive proposals to ban government vaccine passports and restore limits on tracing the close contacts of people exposed to the virus.
Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly’s office said Thursday that the state asked for fewer than 14,000 vaccine doses for the week, out of a federal allotment of almost 162,000. While the state sought its full allotment of 6,400 doses of a one-shot vaccine made by Johnson & Johnson, it requested only 7,510 doses of its allocation of 155,540 doses of two-shot vaccines manufactured by Pfizer and Moderna.
Kansas has seen its vaccination rate slow in recent weeks. It peaked at an average of 29,380 shots a day for the seven days ending April 6 and averaged only 11,872 for the seven days ending Wednesday, according to state Department of Health and Environment data.
Counties have been turning down vaccine doses as demand has waned, and while the department reported that more than 1.95 million shots had been administered as of Wednesday, there still were almost 647,000 more doses available. The health department in Sedgwick County, home to the state’s largest city of Wichita, has reduced the operations of its vaccine clinic by 10 hours a week because of falling demand, The Wichita Eagle reported.