SUN CITY, Arizona – The need for a Covid-19 vaccine is as urgent in Arizona as anywhere else. The numbers show that the coronavirus is spreading faster here than in almost any other state, and Arizona is home to a large number of older people who tend to be at greater risk of dying if they contract the virus.
But that does not mean that doses of the vaccine are flying off the shelves. Instead, 4 out of 5 doses that arrived in Arizona earlier this week were not used, waiting for someone qualified to give the injections.
The suspension of implementation has generated anger and disappointment across the country, although officials said there was still a long time to speed up the pace of vaccines before they started for the general public.
At least in Arizona, one reason for the slow pace was frustratingly simple: years of belt tightening and neglect of state and local health budgets mean that there are not enough people trained to administer the vaccines, current and former government officials said.
“In our state, it’s a skeleton crew by design,” said Will Humble, executive director of the Arizona Public Health Association and former director of the state’s Department of Health Services. He said the desire for low taxes and a smaller government is coming back to bite residents of the state, which has a long history of conservative politics.
Maricopa County, the fourth most populous county in the United States, with 4.5 million inhabitants, received about 133,000 doses of vaccine for its 125,000 frontline health workers. But during this week, only about 44,000 people received their initial vaccines.
The setbacks are affecting a relatively small number of people eligible to be vaccinated now, so the impact may not be lasting. But they raise questions about the broader implementation that is yet to come and risk jeopardizing public confidence in the country’s ability to fire rapidly, especially after tests were postponed during the pandemic.
The task of vaccinating the public has fallen to the same county health departments and hospitals that have been working under the pressure of the pandemic for 10 months. And there are so many workers out there.
“It’s easy to say that you should have 123,000 people in a week, but we are also talking about the fact that these are people who are trying to attend these hospitals, and these individuals who administer the vaccines must also be able to provide a vaccine,” said Marcy Flanagan, executive director of the Maricopa County Department of Public Health.
Maricopa County has set up five locations, or “pods,” in parking lots across the county to deliver the injections. The five sites sued about 7,000 people on Wednesday.
Flanagan said he hopes to be ready to act more quickly when the state and county move to the second group on the priority list, known as 1B. Across the state, 650 sites are administering phase 1A vaccines to first-rate health workers and long-term residents, but they are not the large-scale sites that authorities plan to install in the coming weeks.
Delays in scheduling appointments frustrated some people in phase 1A. An Arizona health worker shared a copy of an email she received on Dec. 21 saying she had been “confirmed eligible for a vaccination at this stage”, but she didn’t hear anything again until a week later.
The worker, who spoke on condition of anonymity because it was a sensitive issue in her workplace, said she was not informed of the reason for the delay, but ended up taking a chance.
There is a separate process involving chains of private pharmacies for long-term care institutions and nursing homes, and these vaccinations have not always been fast either. At the Beatitudes Campus in Phoenix, a senior campus with 700 residents, only 38 residents and staff members received doses on the first vaccination day this week; technicians planned to return the next day to continue giving doses.
Delays and setbacks have been reported in other states, and Trump administration officials this week acknowledged their disappointment with the implementation. They said Christmas and other holidays caused delays, as well as snowstorms and problems with storing vaccine doses at the required temperatures.
“There really has to be a lot more effort, in terms of resources for local people,” said Dr. Anthony Fauci, the government’s leading infectious disease specialist, on Thursday “TODAY”. “We have to support local groups, states and cities to help them do this.”
Fauci said the federal government should provide more resources to states and localities, rather than taking on the effort entirely. Congress recently approved $ 8.8 billion for vaccine distribution.
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Arizona needs help. The state received more than 314,000 doses of vaccine in December, but administered only about 57,000, or 18 percent, as of Tuesday.
“In our state, there is simply no team to do almost anything,” said Humble of the Arizona Public Health Association, a group of members for people working in public health. “They are not doing a great job now because they are understaffed.”
At the same time, the pandemic is getting worse locally. The number of people hospitalized with Covid-19 in Arizona is at an all-time high, and intensive care units were 93% full on Wednesday, also a record high.
Dr. Cara Christ, director of the state’s Department of Health Services, said it would be a “monumental task” to vaccinate the entire population of the state in the coming months. “It will look like it is moving very slowly,” she said. “Everyone is finding this out as we go.”
Arizona’s 15 counties are tasked with disseminating and administering vaccine doses, but the state may intervene. Christ said he would like to get more “cohesive information” for residents.
“I really think that local health departments need to have a say in terms of where these doses go. But what we are seeing is that it is making it difficult for Arizonans to identify where to get vaccinated, ”she said.
Governor Doug Ducey, a Republican, issued an executive order on Wednesday authorizing the Department of Health Services to “take possession of any vaccine distribution and relocate it to provide coverage across the state” for faster distribution and administration .
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An unknown factor is how many people eligible for phase 1A refuse to receive vaccines. In a fire department in Maricopa County, half of the firefighters renounced immediate vaccination, said a person who spoke on condition of anonymity. Local officials said they will know more next week when they see how many people have turned down the nominations.
Private hospitals and health care providers have added resources. Banner Health, a large Phoenix-based medical network, launched a website with information for people seeking vaccines, and Becky Armendariz, a spokeswoman, said she has about 3,000 office hours a day, with eligibility determined by state guidelines. and municipal.
Sonia Singh, a spokeswoman for the Maricopa County Department of Public Health, said that those who give the vaccines are trying to do two things at the same time: running phase 1A for frontline health professionals and planning phase 1B a lot. largest, which in Arizona will include anyone aged 75 or over, as well as essential workers.
“We would like the vaccine to be something that we could send to people’s homes, but this is the time when we need people to take a deep breath,” said Singh. “Be patient with the process. When it’s your turn, you’ll know it’s your turn.”
Vaughn Hillyard reported from Sun City. David Ingram reported from San Francisco.