Health care providers and other vaccinators can start giving COVID-19 vaccines to people who are not in the designated high priority groups, including those 65 and older, but the shots will still not be widely available for now.

State health officials said Thursday that the new guidance applies only to sites that have some leftover doses after completing vaccinations of front-line health care and other high priority workers.

In Minnesota, the emphasis has so far been on vaccinating health care workers and long-term care residents.

State officials were set to unveil plans next week on how to vaccine the next priority groups, which include those 75 and over as well as front-line workers in essential industries.

The state is receiving about 60,000 new vaccine doses each week from allotments made by the federal government.

The federal government has allocated 558,300 doses to the state, with some of those arriving next week.

Of those, 104,900 doses have been marked for long-term care residents and workers.

Over 70% of all doses administered in the state have happened in the state's hospitals, where clinicians that care for COVID-19 patients and emergency department workers were assigned the highest priority.

So far, 5,817 state residents have died in the pandemic, with 64% of them residents of long-term care, including 23 of the 43 new deaths announced Thursday.