ANALYSIS: How Many Vaccine Doses Will Your State Get?

With new coronavirus cases and deaths continuing to emerge at record levels, the United States is poised to begin a lengthy vaccination campaign.

The first shipments of Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccine will not be enough to inoculate even just the medical workers and nursing home residents at the top of the waiting list. But after federal regulators granted emergency authorization for the Pfizer vaccine, millions of doses were expected to be shipped across the country, a small but tangible step toward ending the pandemic.

By design, the vaccine rollout will be a patchwork. Though federal regulators are responsible for deciding when a vaccine can be safely used, it is largely up to the states to determine how to deploy the doses they receive. Recipients of both vaccines will need two doses administered weeks apart. Distribution is meant to be based on adult population estimates.

With no publicly available national data on how much vaccine will be sent to each state, The Times surveyed all 50 state health departments — plus territorial governments and other agencies that may receive allocations — seeking information on how many doses they expected before the end of the year.

While some states provided detailed information, others would only discuss an initial shipment or refused to provide any information at all. In some cases, state estimates have shifted significantly over the past several days, and some states and agencies indicated that their estimates would continue to change as new information emerges.

Out of deference to states and other jurisdictions receiving vaccine doses, a senior administration official said, the Department of Health and Human Services is not publicly releasing planning numbers, but expects to provide more information in the days ahead.

The numbers provided below offer a lens into a national rollout that could begin in just a few days. But because of the differences in reporting practices between states, and because all the numbers given were tentative, they should not be used to draw comparisons. ...