Governor Mike Parson began today’s press conference by taking issue with how the St. Louis Metropolitan Pandemic Task Force is characterizing the state’s vaccine distribution.  Dr. Alex Garza, incident commander of the task force. Garza told the St. Louis Post Dispatch, “We don’t believe that we’re being allocated the amount that we need in order to address the needs of our region given its population size.” This spurred other counties to ask the governor for clarification.

Parson responded that the St. Louis region gets 37 percent of the doses allocated to the state through a rapid-distribution partnership with selected hospitals in each region of the state.  However, Parson says that the St. Louis County Health Department has not gotten its share of the doses it was supposed to have gotten from the partnership.

Currently, there are approximately 50,000 first and second doses in the St. Louis area that have not been reported as administered,” Parson said. “There should be no problem with this vaccine being shared with other agencies which was the agreement that was made.”

The task force stands by its count, saying the region get about 20,000 doses.

“We are confident in the way we estimate the number of doses received by Region C, and our goal has always been to ensure fair and equitable distribution of vaccine with all of our partners,” Garza said in a press statement.

In the briefing, Parson also acknowledged that the state is struggling with vaccine supply.

“Every vaccinator in every region is requesting more vaccine than they are currently receiving because quite simply the demands for the vaccine still far outweigh the supply and we are doing everything we can to get the vaccines out as quickly as the supply will allow,” Parson said,

Watch the entire briefing: