Since July, Yavapai County Community Health Services has been attending weekly meetings with the Arizona Department of Health Services, along with the rest of the state’s counties and tribes, to plan for COVID-19 vaccine distribution whenever a vaccine becomes accessible to the public.
That day may be coming very soon, as trials on vaccines by three different drug companies — Pfizer, Moderna and AstraZeneca — have shown promising results. The first of those three, Pfizer, went unter consideration for Emergency Use Authorization by the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee on Thursday, Dec. 10, after having already been approved for use in the United Kingdom.
If the consideration goes smoothly, the vaccine will begin distribution to state health agencies, which will provide it to county health providers.
“The Arizona Department of Health Services will allocate the vaccine to local county health departments like us, and we will distribute it to our local hospitals and health care agencies that have signed up with ADHS and trained on vaccine administering,” Yavapai County Community Health Services Public Information Officer Terri Farneti wrote in an email. “There are certain pharmacies like Walgreens and CVS that have signed up to get a direct allocation of vaccine from ADHS and have also agreed to vaccinate many of the long- term care facility staff and residents. YCCHS has purchased freezers to store the vaccine and will set a distribution date to hospitals and providers who are prepared to administer the vaccine to their front-line health care workers.”
“We have undergone training and fulfilled the application process to be a distribution site,” Spectrum Healthcare’s Vice President of Integration Sunshine Dean wrote in an email.
“As soon as we have vaccine available and it is ready for community administration we will post information on our website so that the community can come see us.”
Once the vaccine begins distribution, there is still a long list of people who may be getting it before everyone else.
“At this time, we know health care professionals will receive the vaccine first, especially those who will be assisting with vaccinating other populations, as we move through the prioritization list,” Farneti wrote.
“There’s about a dozen or more vaccines in late phase clinical trials, so we may have even more options in the pipeline to allow for different groups to receive the vaccination,” Northern Arizona Healthcare Chief Quality Officer John Mougin said. “We’ve applied to be a point of distribution for vaccination, and we’re working on the logistics around being able to deliver and distribute the vaccination to our employees as well as other candidates for the vaccination. … The vaccine will be distributed in phases, with health care workers earmarked, and essential workers prioritized in early phases, as well as other high-risk individuals. We hope that if things go as planned, that we may have as many as 30 million patients or individuals vaccinated by the end of January. So we’re very excited with this news, as this could change the landscape about COVID for the whole country.”
NAH administrators said that having health care workers vaccinated would make a big difference in the hospital system’s ability to fight the virus, by ensuring that staff are able to safely deal with the patients and not face shortages.
“We’re now concerned about staffing and our colleagues’ ability to care for our patients in adequate numbers in critical areas,” NAH President Flo Spyrow said. “If we can protect our staff, we can be more sure of having the right staff, at the right place, at the right level of care to care for patients as they come to us with health care needs.”
