No FEMA shot site for Pima County
Federal mobile clinics requested for vaccine
Pima County in late March appeared to have won its battle with the state for a federally operated COVID-19 vaccine site. However, the victory was short-lived.
County officials said they won’t be getting a vaccine site operated by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, but that another plan for vaccinating hard-to-reach county residents with federal help is in the works.
Rather than having one or more COVID-19 sites operated by FEMA, the southern Arizona county is asking the federal agency for six mobile vaccination clinics that could travel to under
served areas, with the ability to do 250 to 350 vaccinations per day each.
A FEMA-operated site “would appear to be not viable at this point in time,” Pima County Administrator Chuck Huckelberry told the county’s Board of Supervisors Tuesday morning. The state and FEMA could not reach an agreement about the site, he said.
Officials with the Arizona Department of Health Services confirmed Tuesday afternoon that they were unable to reach the contractual agreement with FEMA necessary to make a federally operated site happen.
Even though the site was to be operated by FEMA in Pima County, the state still had to sign the agreement, which in effect made the state responsible, Dr. Cara Christ, DHS director, said.
“There were some things in the contract that the state was going to have to agree to that FEMA would not budge, but we felt it put the state at a significant liability,” she said. “They didn’t change the things we felt needed to be changed.”
Christ said she’s hopeful the pivot to mobile sites will be a good resolution for Pima County, given that the vaccination scenario in Arizona has shifted. Nearly 30,000 vaccine appointment slots released Friday for appointments statewide this week remained open as of Monday, which is a far different scenario from the frantic rush to get vaccines just weeks ago.
Mobile clinics will allow Pima County the greatest flexibility to get into communities by offering walk-up vaccines without any need for appointments, Huckelberry told the board.
“We’re disappointed the state and FEMA couldn’t come to an agreement on a federally supported vaccination POD (point of distribution) in Pima County, but we’re hopeful the Plan B support of mobile clinics will occur quickly,” Pima County spokesman Mark Evans said in an email.
“We believe a combination of centrally located large vaccination centers, wide vaccine availability via pharmacies, and a system of mobile clinics that takes vaccine to neighborhoods is the best approach to quickly get to the more than 630,000 people we need to reach community immunity (75% of eligible people 16 and older).”
In an emailed statement, FEMA spokesman Robert Barker told The Arizona Republic on Tuesday that, “conversations between federal, state and local emergency management and public health continue regarding FEMA’s support to Pima County,” and that the agency “may have an announcement shortly.”
Nearly a month ago, the Pima County Board of Supervisors publicly took the state to task for rejecting a FEMA site in the state and passed an emergency resolution asking Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey to reconsider the decision.
Two days after the board’s emergency resolution, the state relented and said Pima County could move ahead and work with FEMA on establishing a site, though there was a palpable rift between the state and FEMA.
Christ was critical of both FEMA and Pima County in a March 26 letter to FEMA authorizing the Pima County site. She was dubious about Pima County officials’ ability to adequately support a federal vaccine site, and accused FEMA employees of mistreating some state and county health workers. Both FEMA and Pima County officials later disputed the letter’s claims.
At that time, Pima County officials said its “greatest limitation” was vaccine supply, and that a FEMA site was a way of getting nearly 250,000 doses into the county.
Vaccine supply is no longer a problem in Pima County.
As of Monday, a stateoperated vaccine site on the University of Arizona campus in Tucson had 4,600 unfilled appointments available through Sunday.
A similar trend is happening statewide, where vaccine supply is either meeting or outpacing demand. It’s a problem that was unthinkable on March 24, when the Pima County Board of Supervisors was so adamant about getting a FEMA operated vaccine site.
While there are some people who are always going to refuse to get the COVID-19 vaccine, there are others who aren’t vaccinated because it’s an inconvenience because of a number of barriers, including time, technology, mobility and language, Dr. Francisco Garcia, Pima County chief medical officer, told the supervisors.
The county’s strategy now needs to be decreasing those barriers, which is why the six FEMA mobile units will be so useful, he said.
“The reason that vaccinator events, whether it’s in Glendale or elsewhere, do so well is because they are efficient. And if your customer can drive to that location, it makes your life easier,” he said. “Well, we’re done with the low-hanging fruit in Pima County.”
Christ said state health officials put a lot of work into trying to reach an agreement about a FEMA site in Pima County. But as vaccine supply and demand has shifted, the mobile units seem like a better strategy for improving vaccine uptake than a fixed site, she said.
“As we’re starting to reach where supply meets demand, people are going to be less likely to go out of their way to get vaccinated. We have to go and make it easy now for probably the next group of individuals that we’re reaching out to,” she said.
“I’m hoping that this issue has been resolved ... Mobile strategies really are where Pima County probably needs to focus right now.”