Several weeks into its distribution of the COVID vaccine, Colorado is running ahead of most other states on inoculating its early priority groups, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The state’s early vaccine response could be improved, Gov. Jared Polis and others have said said, but it’s drawn praise from several health officials across the state. Per the CDC’s data, which lags slightly behind state data, Colorado has used roughly 42% of the 282,400 vaccine doses it’s received thus far. That’s about 2,125 doses per 100,000 people, the 13th-best rate in the country. 

“It’s good to say we’re ahead of the curve compared to the rest of the country,” Gov. Jared Polis said at a Wednesday press conference. He noted that the numbers fluctuate as shipments come in early in the week and are distributed later in the week. “We’ve consistently been in the top tier of states in successfully getting vaccine into arms.”

Still, the current number amounts to roughly 2% of the state’s population and 6% of its priority population, according to Polis and the Washington Post’s tracking of national vaccine progress. That also only accounts for the first injection, not the number of people who’ve been fully vaccinated, which at this point is relatively small.

“But this is not an exercise that’s graded on a curve,” Polis continued. “We need to do better here in Colorado, the entire nation needs to do much better.”

The state is nearing the completion of its effort to vaccinate high-risk health care workers. As part of a federal program, CVS and Walgreens are handling the other part of the top priority, residents and staff of long-term care facilities. Polis and the state’s health director both indicated at the press conference that he wanted that process to pick up speed; as of Tuesday, fewer than 5,000 doses had been administered to that particularly at-risk group.

“We talk to (Walgreens and CVS) regularly, we are on them, we want to make sure they meet their timelines,” he said.

He said that Walgreens is anticipating finishing its first doses by the end of next week, while CVS projects it’ll take until the end of January. According to data presented by Polis, there are 197,000 Coloradans in the top tier of priorities. The entirety of the top tier should be finished by Jan. 15. 

In the lower part of the top tier, which includes first responders, those over 69 years old and educators, there are more than 1.3 million people. Vaccinating that group will take the next couple of months, Polis said.

Jill Hunsaker Ryan, the executive director of the state Department of Public Health and Environment, said at that press conference that the state is working to distribute the vaccines as quickly and efficiently as possible. She added that the state receives about 70,000 vaccines each week. 

“This is an enormous undertaking,” she said.

Cara Welch, spokeswoman for the Colorado Hospital Association, praised the state as pulling off “an incredible feat of vaccinating this many people over the past few weeks.” She and others said the process will further improve as the state sorts through growing pains.

Overall, experts said, the distribution process has been about as clean as could be expected, despite Polis and state health officials repeatedly tweaking the vaccine priority list over the past week. 

“I think the state health department has done a good job with what they’ve had,” said John Hammer, an infectious disease specialist at Rose Medical Center. He criticized the lack of direction from the federal government, which has left the states to devise plans and priorities among themselves. “Utilizing hospital systems to dole out vaccines, that system appears to have worked well.”

But he cautioned that the two groups who’ve started being vaccinated thus far — health care workers and long-term care residents and staff — are logistically easier than others in the general public. Hospitals can more effectively vaccinate their own, while long-term care facilities are ready-made clinics with their own steady populations. 

Still, he said the state needed to do more, including rolling out a better plan to communicate with the general public on when they need to receive their second vaccine and for hospitals and providers to track who’s been vaccinated.

“In my mind, it’s not quick enough,” Hammer said. “I would rather have everybody vaccinated in hospitals now and move onto community vaccinations more aggressively. We’re starting to do that.”

Richard Zane, a UCHealth physician and professor at the University of Colorado’s School of Medicine, was more effusive about the state’s efforts, saying that the rollout here has “been kicking butt.” But he, too, said that the bigger issue facing Colorado’s effective distribution of the inoculations came from uncertainty at the national level.

At Polis’s press conference Wednesday, officials said that the number of vaccines has fluctuated from week to week. But as more vaccines are delivered, and more brands of vaccine are approved, the state will need to prepare for more rollout, more patients and more logistics. 

“Sometimes it’s a little bit erratic and that’s challenging,” Zane said. “There’s not enough vaccines. We knew it wouldn’t be enough. From my perspective on how Colorado is doing, I think we’re learning, what has worked well, what has not worked well. We were never going to do something that was immaculate and perfect from the very beginning.”