By L. Parsons Acting Navajo County Public Health Director Janelle Linn gave an update on COVID-19 mitigation at last week’s Navajo County Board of Supervisor’s meeting. In it, she noted, “We are experiencing some vaccine challenges. We are currently in Tier 1A and Tier 1B and added the 65 years of age and older to our tiers, which added more people eligible for vaccine. There is no more vaccine to accommodate that with. We are still experiencing supply shortages because the demand for the vaccine far exceeds the amount of vaccine that we are being allocated. We are at the mercy of the manufacturer, the federal government and the state and we have been receiving between 400 and 1,500 doses a week for our allotment.” Linn spoke of the concerns she has heard from the citizens of Navajo County who are attempting to make appointments to be vaccinated. “We are hearing a lot from the public. They are discouraged and frustrated in trying to schedule appointments through the vaccine link. A lot of them think that the link is broken so we are trying to share the message that the links work, there are just not enough vaccines available to meet the demands. In Navajo County, we are working with all of our partners and the way that we have opted to arrange things, is to not schedule an appointment unless there is a dose of vaccine to provide at that appointment. We feel that that avoids us having to cancel appointments or give the public a false sense of security that they are going to be receiving the vaccine. Linn stated that her department continues to ask for patience. “We share in your frustration; we know it’s not a perfect system. We are working with the vendor that we use for the registration process to try to add a few new features that might prompt messages letting people know that appointments are full, not that the system is down. We recognize there is a problem and the problem is there is just not enough vaccine.” She continued, “One of the things that we are really hopeful about is the Johnson & Johnson vaccine going before the American Council for Immunization Practices this week. Once it moves through that council, it will go in front of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for approval. We are very hopeful that within the next seven to 10 days we will have another vaccine product on the market. We still are waiting to see the safety and efficacy data for this product, but it is a one dose vaccine so that could also be extremely helpful. Currently, the county website hosts the dashboard for COVID resources including appointment scheduling at www.navajocountyaz.gov. The discussion of drive-thru clinics and larger distribution sites has been taking place statewide. According to Arizona Department of Health Services (AZDHS), in Maricopa County it is estimated that at State Farm Stadium, 7,000 vaccines are administered per day. Linn said, “Once more of the vaccine becomes available, we will be activating our point-of-dispensing, or POD sites at local fire departments and offering drive up clinics but for the time being, there’s just not enough vaccine to be able to do that. AZDHS has received funding from the federal government to assist with distribution. We did submit our plan to them, it is a strong plan. We have practiced our POD sites for over 10 years so our community is comfortable with that process as are our fire departments. That puts us ahead of the game of some other counties that are new to that model. We are hopeful that we will receive adequate funding so that when we move into that model, we can quickly distribute the vaccine to our communities.” Another concern from the public, Linn explained, is second doses. Both the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines require two doses, 28 days apart. Linn said, “We are starting to get some comments and questions about people receiving their second doses. What we are encouraging is that you please reach out to the facility where you received your first dose and work with them to schedule an appointment for the second one. That will ensure that we have allocated a second dose to that facility for you.” Despite the vaccine distribution issues facing the nation and the county, Linn is hopeful. “Navajo County is at 14,066 total cases and 36 new cases in the last 24 hours. This information is really promising, we are hoping that we are on the downhill slide of our second spike. We were having 100 to 150 new cases reported to us a day and we have declined to being in the 30s now over the last 10 days. This is happening across the State of Arizona and our three tribal partners are reporting a similar pattern.” However, she said, “The thing that is still concerning is hospital bed capacity. Hospitals across Arizona are 92 percent full and Summit Health Care is reporting to us that their ICU (intensive care unit) is full and they have one bed available on their regular floor. So, the people that are infected are still needing a high acuity of care.” Staffing remains an issue county wide. According to Linn, the county health department has been making personnel adjustments to better mitigate the situation. “We are pulling some of the surge staff that we hired off of the contact tracing activities and training them and preparing them for vaccine distribution. Summit has requested 30 surge nurses and we were able to secure those nurses for them and they are onsite assigned to Summit through March.”
