distribution

State health officials said Friday that Michigan has capacity to vaccinate up to 80,000 people a day but the supply of COVID-19 doses, while higher in recent weeks, remains limited.

They also said their goal is to ensure no one has to travel more than 20 minutes to a vaccination site in the pandemic, and that a priority is to allocate additional doses to areas based on factors such as poverty, lack of transportation and crowded housing.

The University of Michigan’s Big House has been transformed into The Big Vaccine Clinic.

A few hundred University of Michigan medical professionals and students who work in health care settings received their first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine on Thursday at Michigan Stadium, one of the nation’s largest sporting venues.

Known as The Big House, the on-campus stadium welcomed 100,000-plus maize-and-blue-clad fans on fall Saturdays before the pandemic.

The first of many freezer-packed COVID-19 vaccine vials made their way to distribution sites across the United States on Sunday, as the nation’s pandemic deaths approached the horrifying new milestone of 300,000.

Michigan expects to receive about 257,000 doses of COVID-19 vaccines initially if the federal government authorizes them for emergency use this month, enough to immunize roughly 128,000 residents, a top doctor said Thursday.