Will Humble Disease Control, Wills Blog

ADHS Director Scraps COVID-19 Spread Metrics for Business Operations

Substantial Spread Effectively No Longer Exists as a Category for Informing Interventions

Over the summer a host of stakeholders including the business community developed COVID-19 metrics to inform policy decisions like when it’s time to impose additional operational restrictions on bars and restaurants. Shortly after the ideas were presented to the Governor’s Office, the ADHS adopted the metrics and highlighted them as a key tool for driving future intervention decisions.

The metrics were then used when the state decided to lift the limitations put on bars, restaurants and gyms during the summer “pause”.

The protocol was scrapped in mid-December to ensure that the state metrics never suggest additional operational restrictions are needed at bars and restaurants no matter how bad community spread gets.

Here’s a story from the Health Arizona Daily Star that describes the decision by Dr. Christ to scrap the business metrics and her rationale for doing so.

Under the former criteria, bars and in-person dining are not allowed to operate when a county is in the ‘Substantial’ category.

As community spread began to increase in late October and into November & December, county after county moved into the Substantial spread category. When asked why the ADHS was not advocating for enhanced interventions because of the substantial spread, Dr. Christ (the agency director) said that while the metrics and protocol were valuable for deciding when to open businesses, they weren’t useful for deciding when to close them or to impose additional operational restrictions.

As that argument became increasingly untenable, the agency changed the standards governing business operations such that it’s impossible to reach a threshold in which community spread is high enough to warrant enhanced interventions on bars and restaurants no matter how serious the infection rate gets. Basically, Substantial Spread has been eliminated as a category.

Will Humble Disease Control, Vaccination, Wills Blog

Initial Vaccination Efforts Complicated by Glitchy ADHS Computer System

Less than 18% of the COVID19 vaccines that have been delivered in Arizona had been used as of 12/31. Clearly something is amiss, but what?

It turns out that one of the core reasons for the slow use of vaccines had to do with an ADHS computer software system. It was supposed to efficiently make vaccination appointments and provide billing information among other things. It’s built into the ADHS’ Vaccine Management System (VMS).

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. Many received no information at all back from the ADHS system. Others were instructed to go to Show Low, Globe or Snowflake for their vaccine even though they live in Maricopa County.

As a result, two of the five mass vaccination sites in Maricopa County were largely empty for many days in December. The glitches have apparently been corrected as of this weekend.

It’s a long story, but 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.

New COVID Vaccine Executive Order Issued

Last week the Governor issued an Executive Order that he said is designed to make vaccination efforts more streamlined. The Executive Order says that the ADHS is supposed to use a statewide “vaccine allocation model”, can reallocate vaccine, and must approve all private vaccination sites. It also requires counties to post their vaccination progress and vaccination sites on their websites.

The Order doesn’t give the ADHS any authority that it doesn’t already have, but it does provide some direction and expectations to the Department.

Here’s where you can look it over. Honestly, it doesn’t look substantive to me.

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