(Newser)
– A county in Arizona has simplified its requirements for receiving the COVID-19 vaccination: you only need to be over 18 years old. Gila County opened its vaccine stock two weeks ago, in part because it has one of the lowest used dose rates in the state, CBS reports. Health officials also received approval from Arizona last week to give vaccines at a drive-through clinic. “Before that, we were struggling to find enough people to make appointments,” said Michael O’Driscoll, director of public health for the county. “So, the state gave me permission to offer it to any resident aged 18 or over.” A survey in the county showed that half of the population of 56,000 would be vaccinated, if possible; about a quarter of residents have had at least one injection.
Authorities have now started offering vaccines to everyone working in the small county east of Phoenix, too, according to CNN. A major communication effort to inform people that vaccines were available, essentially treating the pandemic as a wildfire, worked well, officials said. “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.” People from various communities and county departments helped provide residents with the vaccine. A nursing employee at the Regional Copper Medical Center said that young people still lack courage, mainly to get vaccines, which, according to her, can hinder efforts to achieve collective immunity. Gila County reported 3,885 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 154 deaths on Thursday. (Read more coronavirus vaccine stories.)