Arizona’s efforts to vaccinate top priority populations got off to a rocky start in December and January in part due to glitches in the software that was developed by an ADHS contractor designed to coordinate appointments at the various mass vaccination clinics.
It’s a long story, but glitches in the ADHS’ VMS scheduling software failed to make appointments for thousands of healthcare workers that had pre-registered for vaccination. If you want to read more, check out this story by Ray Stern in the Phoenix New Times: Arizona Vaccine Rollout Delayed by Computer Glitches, County Says.
My contacts are telling me that some (but not all) of the bugs have been worked out of the system. That has helped to make the system more efficient in the last week. There are various sources of data that you can refer to as you track how AZ is progressing. The state health department has a web file that they update periodically with the latest number of vaccinations given by county at this web page.
As of today, it shows that about 263K actual shots have been administered out of the 600K+ vaccines that have been delivered. Remember, these vaccines require a booster so many of those vaccines are the follow up shot (fewer than 263K persons have been vaccinated).
To get a perspective of how AZ is doing when compared to other states both in numbers and rates, you can State-by-state data on COVID-19 vaccinations in the United States – Our World in Data.
Category 1b Expanded to Include People Between 65-74
Prior to last week there were more than 1,000,000 Arizonans in Category 1b including more than 500,000 people over the age of 75. With only about 200,000 persons vaccinated so far, you can see that we have only scratched the surface when it comes to vaccinating seniors.
Nevertheless, the ADHS elected last week to expand the pool of persons in Category 1b by an additional 250,000 by adding persons aged 65-74 to the cohort.
Editorial Note: I don’t understand the wisdom of adding 250,000 more persons to Category 1b when there is such a long way to go vaccinating the higher-risk 75+ folks. My concern is that this new more digitally adept and mobile group of seniors may crowd out those persons over 75 that still haven’t been vaccinated. With advanced age being the dominant risk factor, and persons over 75 at higher risk than persons 65 -74 it seems counter-productive.
Many if not all county health departments have elected to focus squarely on the 75+ group for now. The ADHS vaccination site at State Farm is apparently vaccinating basically anybody among the 1,250,000 persons in Category 1b, including persons aged 65-74 (per Director Christ beginning Tuesday January 19).
The decision to add persons 65 to 74 years old to Category 1b IS NOT based on CDC Advisory Committee for Immunization Practice Recommendations. Rather, it came from an announcement at a press event from soon to be former HHS Secretary Azar that he thought persons 65-74 should be added. The ADHS Director promptly took his advice rather than staying consistent with ACIP recommendations.
The CDC and the ACIP are still recommending that persons between 65 and 74 stay in Category 1c.
