Starting in late 2020, after a year of shuttered stores and hundreds of thousands of deaths caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, the United States began the largest scale vaccination distribution effort in its history.
The federal government began to send weekly shipments of the mRNA COVID-19 vaccines from Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech to the states in December based on population. But once received, each state must decide how to distribute its allotment of vaccinations to its residents. With a limited supply of vaccines, each state must decide who will receive the vaccines first.
MultiState is tracking each state's vaccination plan as it adapts to the evolving environment. MultiState's State Vaccine Dashboard is focused on who is currently eligible to receive a vaccine in each state as well as plans for future eligible populations.
Age Group Eligibility
Beginning in February 2021, all 50 states began vaccinating by age group (up from only 37 states in January). Governors announced that people in defined age groups were eligible for vaccination while defining essential workers more narrowly and pushing that group back into later phases of the vaccination rollout. Most states found a middle ground that allowed for the oldest Americans to begin receiving vaccinations as well as a focused subset of most vulnerable workers. Below is a map breaking down which states have expanded eligibility for which age groups.