By Tim Mastro

DOVER — Delaware is in the middle of the pack compared to the rest of the nation in its quest to vaccinate its population against COVID-19.

The state will have a solid chance to improve its position this week when all Delawareans above the age of 16 become eligible to sign up for the vaccine on Tuesday. Individuals can sign up for the state’s waiting list at vaccinerequest.delaware.gov.

As of Friday at 11:59 p.m., Delaware has fully-vaccinated 174,454 individuals — 17.67% of the state’s total population, according to information via the Delaware Division of Public Health’s vaccine tracker, which uses data from the state’s immunization tracking system DelVAX.

Compared to other states, this percentage would put it at 25th in the country, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s data tracker. The latest CDC data was 6 a.m. Friday.

Most of the other states ahead of Delaware have already opened up vaccinations to their entire population.

Delaware has administered 492,657 total vaccine doses. A total of 474,820 doses have been shipped directly to the state while another 125,355 were allocated through the Federal Pharmacy Program.

The state has used 82% of doses it has reported receiving so far. This puts it just outside of the top-10 compared to other states using the same data via the CDC, as of 6 a.m. Friday.

After a setback in February due to supply, Delaware has caught up to the rest of the country in terms of first doses administered of a two-dose vaccine series. The state had a two-week stretch where it was mostly focused on second doses after weather prevented some vaccine shipments from arriving on time.

Delaware is now one of 30 states that has administered more than 90% of its doses received that are designated as first doses, according to the CDC. Most of Delaware’s surrounding states are also above 90% in this category except New Jersey, as well as the District of Columbia, which are both between 80% and 90%. Only six states are below 80% — Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Wyoming, Alaska and Hawaii.

Delaware is averaging 7647.3 total doses administered per day over the last seven days. A month ago, the seven-day rolling average was at 7147.9 doses per day and two months ago it was 3,411.6 doses per day.

There are 156,442 total persons who have received a first dose of a two-dose vaccine series and are awaiting their second dose.