MOHAVE COUNTY – An abundance of information regarding the administration of COVID-19 vaccine was detailed during Tuesday’s Mohave County Board of Supervisors meeting. County Manager Sam Elters said the State of Arizona gets 300,000 doses per week.
Elters said 20% of the allocation is taken off the top for use at the mass vaccination sites in Phoenix and Tucson. He said the rest is supposed to be divided and apportioned to each of the 15 counties in Arizona.
“Has anyone taken a look to make sure that our county is getting our share per capita of vaccine and that we’re not somehow being shorted nationally or in our own state,” queried Dist. 5 Sup Ron Gould.
Department of Public Health Director Denise Burley said the question comes up frequently but that the Arizona Department of Health Services has not disclosed any allocation formula or “that level of transparency.” She said Mohave County gets 3,000 doses per week and its allocation should total 28,700 doses in coming days.
“At 3,000 a week, it’s going to take forever,” said Dist. 3 Sup. Buster Johnson.
Elters said the county has worked vaccination events with specific providers locally but has not yet attained sufficient supply to conduct the mass vaccination events it is prepared to offer.
“We still have the plans in place, the desire to do so and hopefully when the vaccine becomes abundantly available, we can get to that point,” Elters said.
Dist. 1 Sup. Travis Lingenfelter said schools need to reopen their classrooms and he asked Burley if they can do so safely.
“There are studies available right now that show that schools can reopen if they include mitigation strategies in their processes, so I do believe schools can open safely if they’re following those strategies so they can protect the students and the staff,” Burley said.
Burley told supervisors that the county this week will begin sending 20-50 samples to T-gen, a sophisticated genomic testing laboratory that will research whether variant strains of COVID-19 are turning up in northwest Arizona.
Dave Hawkins