COVID shots:
How Ducey intends to speed up vaccinations.
In a move intended to accelerate Arizona’s lagging COVID-19 vaccine rollout, Gov. Doug Ducey on Tuesday issued new rules, including giving the state authority to take unused doses back from providers and reallocate them.
An enhanced COVID-19 surveillance advisory renewed by Ducey on Tuesday will include new reporting requirements that are meant to speed up what has been a slower-than-expected administration of COVID-19 vaccine in the state, Dr. Cara Christ, Arizona Department of Health Services director, told The Arizona Republic.
In addition to limiting factors in terms of the federal supply Arizona is receiving, Christ said some providers may not be using all their vaccine doses. And if that’s the case, the state wants to take those doses back and use them as quickly as possible.
“It’s going to require certain providers that have 40% or more of their doses being reported as unused, they are going to have to submit a plan to the department that tells us how they are going to significantly increase and use that vaccine within the next seven days,” Christ said of the new reporting requirements.
“If we don’t agree they’ve got a great plan, we can take doses back at the state level.”
Health providers in Arizona are either not reporting that they are administering the COVID-19 vaccine, or they are just not administering it at the rate state officials want to see, Christ said.
The new requirements will give the state authority to take back unused doses from providers who don’t have adequate plans to use them, she said.
Providers will be required to report the total number of doses administered since Dec. 17; the number of doses administered in the prior 24 hours; the total amount of vaccine doses remaining; appointment capacity and availability over the next seven days; the number of appointments scheduled over the next seven days and the date furthest out that they have appointments, Christ said.
“The COVID-19 vaccination is our best shot at returning to life as it should be. Over the last two weeks, the COVID-19 vaccination site at State Farm Stadium has become a national model for vaccine administration,” Ducey said in a written statement.
“With adequate vaccine doses, we can build on this success, both at our existing vaccination sites, and at additional sites across the state. This advisory will provide transparency in the pace of vaccination administration, and allow us to direct vaccine doses to where they will be most rapidly distributed.”
There are providers with 40% or more doses that are not being used, Christ said, citing information from Arizona’s immunization registry.
“At State Farm, we are administering what we’re getting pretty quickly,” Christ said, referring to a state-run site at State Farm Stadium in Glendale.
“But other providers are not doing that. We want to know, what is the provider’s plan for those doses and how are you going to speed that up and get them into arms in the next seven days.”
According to a tracker from Bloomberg, which lags slightly, Arizona ranks among the lower half of states nationwide for the percentage of shots used out of available doses. Seventeen states had administered a lower percentage of their vaccine supply, the tracker showed Monday.
Monday’s numbers indicated Arizona had administered 55.3% of its supply.
“There will be additional reporting requirements and what these reporting requirements are designed to do is to look at the rate of (vaccine) administration in Arizona so that we can significantly ramp it up,” Christ said.
“I want as much vaccine in the arms of Arizonans as possible . ... If there are 10,000 doses collectively sitting places that I can get to Phoenix Municipal Stadium, that’s 10,000 appointments I could open up next week.”
If providers are sitting on vaccine supply to stock up on second doses, or if they are stockpiling for other reasons, “that is not really an appropriate strategy,” Christ said. The state would rather take those doses back and administer them at a more efficient site, she said.
Starting Feb. 1, the state plans to open a second site at Phoenix Municipal Stadium. State officials also are looking at opening state-run sites in southern Arizona, and in Coconino County, in addition to existing sites that counties are operating in those areas, she said. The State Farm model is a successful one that can be set up in other areas, she said.
The State Farm site is expected to be doing 10,000 to 12,000 doses per day in February, Christ said.
The Phoenix Municipal Stadium site is expected to start at 500 doses per day because of limited availability of doses.
Last week, the federal government denied a request from the state Department of Health Services to allocate 300,000 additional vaccine doses per week to Arizona, state officials said.
In total, 486,338 vaccine doses have been administered statewide. Both vaccines being administered — PfizerBioNTech and Moderna — require two doses.
Local health agencies and health care providers have administered 407,757 doses of the vaccine to Arizonans since Dec. 16, at an average rate of 9,708 doses per day statewide, the Department of Health Services said.
The department has administered 79,112 doses since Jan. 11 at an average rate of 5,247 per day at State Farm Stadium alone.
Arizona has a population of about 7.4 million people.
Some health providers have been holding onto COVID-19 vaccines in preparation for an immunization event and the state is supportive of plans like that. But they want to make sure partners are using their doses appropriately and quickly, Christ said.
“What this is trying to do is allow us to more efficiently use the current supply that we have . ... It’s a significant effort,” Christ said of the new reporting requirements.
Christ said the state is looking at doing mobile vaccination sites to senior communities and areas that have been disproportionately impacted by COVID-19.
“We are going to be trying to make it easier,” she said.