Just two weeks after extending eligibility for the COVID-19 vaccination to workers in the huge hospitality and casino industry in southern Nevada, employees are again having trouble filling out appointments.
About 78,000 Clark County residents received their first dose of the vaccine during the week that ended on Tuesday. That’s a drop of more than 20 percent from the previous week, according to the weekly update of the Southern Nevada Health District.
Although local officials expected a “ebb and flow” in the demand for vaccines, Clark County fire chief John Steinbeck said he was surprised that the numbers had dropped so quickly after members of the dominant industry in the country. region became eligible.
“Our expectation was that we would fill all of the vacancies,” said Steinbeck, who helps lead the county’s vaccine operations, of the recent expansion of eligibility.
March proved to be a challenging month for southern Nevada’s vaccination efforts, even as the federal government increased the state’s first and second dose weekly allocations.
Earlier this month, district health officials reported that thousands of vaccination schedules were empty. Days later, state officials opened up eligibility for food and hospitality service workers in the region, a huge category in the gaming and tourism sectors of the Las Vegas economy.
The county is now open to consultations again.
300 thawed doses threatened
Low participation at the Las Vegas Convention Center’s mass vaccination site over the weekend threatened 300 thawed doses with expiration, said health district health officer Dr. Fermin Leguen. Authorities opened the site on Monday, when it is normally closed, to offer the remaining vaccines to visitors.
The county’s two mass vaccination sites have accepted more than 5,000 walk-ins for the first few doses this month, health district data show.
During a health district meeting on Thursday, counselor Olivia Diaz said she believed the state’s new vaccine referral system was contributing to the problem.
“I think it is really imperative that we, as the health district, remove the barriers instead of putting them in place,” she said. “The vaccination marking system is not very easy to use.”
JoAnn Rupiper, the director of clinical services for the health district, told the council that the naming system was “working through bugs”. She said the health district is accepting more visits to help sites reach capacity, including people who are currently not eligible.
“When a person is in front of you, you get the vaccine,” she said. “You don’t wait. Because if they wait, they may never come back. “
Overall, more than 555,000 county residents received at least one dose of the vaccine and more than 290,000 are fully vaccinated.
Despite the recent drop in new vaccinations, the county plans to adhere to the state’s plan to wait until April 5 to open eligibility for all Nevadans aged 16 and over, county commission chairman Marilyn Kirkpatrick said Monday. market.
“We have about 176,000 hospitality employees, so we wanted to give them the opportunity to get in and out,” she said.
Low demand on smaller sites too
Smaller government-run vaccination sites in southern Nevada are also having trouble filling appointments.
To make vaccination more convenient, North Las Vegas this week began offering consultations on its College of Southern Nevada website until 8 pm, said city manager Ryann Juden. The city was ending around 3:30 pm
“We are a 24-hour city,” said Juden. “We wanted to be more accommodated to this reality.”
An UNLV Medicine official said that his vaccination appointments were only half filled before eligibility was opened for hospitality workers. Appointments have increased, but not to expected levels.
The two UNLV sites combined can accommodate more than 2,000 people per day. On Wednesday, the venues had about 1,600 appointments scheduled, said Dr. Michael Gardner, president and CEO of UNLV Medicine, the medical practice of the UNLV School of Medicine.
Gardner said he is looking forward to expanding eligibility again. He is not concerned about the overload of the sites.
“My biggest fear is that the hesitation of the vaccine is still very real and … we are not getting the number of people we want to be vaccinated,” he said. “I think there is a lot of misinformation out there. I think we live in an age and an age when there is a lot of mistrust. “
County officials have been working to increase vaccination in minority communities, addressing distrust and hesitation.
This week, they unveiled the “Back to Life” campaign, which aims to contain concerns about the vaccine through multimedia and community outreach. Uber offered to offer rides to the distribution sites of the 10 most affected zip codes in the county.
A similar and older program for the Latin population of the region, “Está en Tus Manos” (“It’s in your hands”), seems to be working. Almost triple the number of Latinos who were vaccinated in March compared to February.
Pharmacies say they are agitated
Meanwhile, open consultations do not appear to be a problem for pharmacies in southern Nevada that supply COVID-19 vaccines. Neighborhood pharmacies may be more convenient for many than mass vaccination sites, which usually have to wait an hour or more.
The number of injections given each week increased by almost 10,000 earlier this month, after high-risk residents 55 and older became eligible to receive vaccines at pharmacies. The number remained almost the same last week, after pharmacies were accused of vaccinating residents aged 16 and over with certain medical conditions that put them at risk for complications from COVID-19.
Consultations fill up quickly at Smith’s 35 pharmacies in southern Nevada, which administered more than 30,000 doses of the vaccine, said Dan Heller, coordinator of health and wellness pharmacy practice for the region.
Smith’s dozens of pharmacies in the region are prepared to double the number of injections they can give each day, Heller said. The chain expects to receive more vaccine from the state through the Federal Retail Pharmacy Program.
“We just didn’t have the allocation yet to get there with what the state is giving us at the moment, but we expect that to change significantly in the coming weeks,” said Heller.
Contact Michael Scott Davidson at [email protected] or 702-477-3861. follow @davidsonlvrj on twitter.
Contact Mary Hynes at [email protected]. follow @ MaryHynes1 on twitter.