Now, in Gila County, Arizona – located 90 minutes east of Phoenix – anyone over 18 can be vaccinated.
“We were struggling to find people in category 65+ to apply for the vaccine,” Michael O’Driscoll, Gila’s director of health and emergency management, told CNN.
As a result, O’Driscoll said he made a request to the state in February to make vaccines available to the general population. The state officially approved its request on February 17.
The saturation of the first dose of vaccines among those eligible has been so successful that, as of Thursday, those working in Gila are also
Gila, which is a county of 54,000, is now in Phase 2 of vaccine administration at the end of February, according to O’Driscoll.
Authorities credit the county’s success with vaccines to an aggressive communication campaign to ensure that anyone who is eligible for the vaccine knows that it is eligible.
“What we did was set up the pandemic exactly as we would during our fire season,” said O’Driscoll. “We set up our incident command in a very similar way to this one.”
The incident’s command structure establishes a community-wide response in which people from all different departments and communities help provide vaccines to residents, said O’Driscoll.
The county requested help from health organizations, hospitals and doctors. “We received such tremendous support from these partners that we had about six partners,” said O’Driscoll.
Cases are declining considerably in the state and the county, said O’Driscoll, adding that life will change for the better in Gila because of vaccination efforts.
“Today we have only two positive cases, where we were up to 60 a day ago,” he said.
There is still hesitation among residents to get vaccinated, especially among the younger population, said Rhonda Mason, head of nursing at the Regional Copper Medical Center.
This, she said, will “challenge us to obtain collective immunity”.
Some of those who got the vaccine said they were grateful for the county’s efforts.
“It feels great,” Kevin Kane, 24, told CNN. “It looks like I’ll be able to move on with my life when this is over.”
Paul Miller, who lives in Tucson but works in Gila, told CNN that he is happy that he is now eligible to receive the vaccine in the county.
He said he has not been able to visit his parents with his 2-year-old daughter for about a year.
“It is a step closer to seeing them.”