By Emily Hamer
The Wisconsin State Journal
MADISON — Nearly half of the Wisconsin state prison population has gotten at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, the Wisconsin Department of Corrections reported Tuesday.
A total of 9,536 of the state’s roughly 19,400 prisoners have been either fully or partially vaccinated, according to DOC’s COVID-19 data dashboard, which is updated every Tuesday.
About 3,100 of those incarcerated individuals were vaccinated within the last week. As of last week Tuesday, only 6,437 inmates had gotten a dose.
Wisconsin prisoners have been eligible for the COVID-19 vaccine since March 1, but vaccinations were slow going throughout the month of March.
DOC did not start releasing data on how many inmates were getting vaccinated until April. The department first reported that just 1,382 prisoners had been vaccinated as of April 5.
Since then, DOC has vaccinated a few thousand inmates each week, except for from April 13 to April 20, when just 595 additional vaccinations were reported.
DOC spokesperson John Beard did not respond to a question about whether there was a reason for the drop that week. He said he did not know if the temporary pause of the Johnson & Johnson shot had an impact.
Also Tuesday, DOC started providing a breakdown of the doses by type for the first time.
Of the 9,536 inmates who got at least one dose, 1,787 of them received the Johnson & Johnson shot while 7,749 got either the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine, DOC said. Of those with Pfizer or Moderna, 1,377 have now gotten their second shot, according to DOC.
So far, 10,960 inmates have been infected with COVID-19, but only 11 of those cases were active as of Tuesday, DOC said.
A total of 31 incarcerated people have died from COVID-19.
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