COVID In Colorado: Gov. Jared Polis Wants Every Coronavirus Vaccine Dose Administered Within 72 Hours

DENVER (CBS4)- Gov. Jared Polis wants every vaccine dose that is delivered to Colorado to be used within 72 hours. The vaccine shelf life is longer than that, but he doesn't want any dose to be wasted.

The vaccines will be administered in three phases in Colorado.

Those phases include these groups:

• Phase 1: Highest-risk health care workers and individuals
• Phase 2: Higher-risk individuals and essential workers
• Phase 3: General public

Colorado's first round of Pfizer COVID-19 vaccinations includes 46,800 that have already arrived. A shipment of 95,600 doses of the Moderna coronavirus vaccine is expected to arrive in Colorado soon, once it has received emergency use authorization from the FDA.

Unlike the Pfizer version, Moderna's vaccine does not need to be kept in extremely cold conditions so it is easier to transport and store.

"Now every dose that we allocate to a nursing home, to a hospital, needs to be used within 72 hours. Not per the label, of course, it can be stored longer, but in Colorado, we want to make sure that we use it because if they don't, we want somebody else to use it," said Polis.

Last week, the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment said it expects to receive regular COVID-19 vaccine allocations from the federal government on a weekly basis.