COVID-19 vaccinations drop at state run POD’s

TUCSON, Ariz. (KOLD News 13) - Compare and contrast vaccination sites from three weeks ago to today.

The line at the city-run site at the Tucson Convention Center a few weeks ago when it was age-restricted went on forever.

The TCC today had a no lines when everyone is eligible. You would think lines would be long but they are not.

Some are still showing up, but the number of people being vaccinated there has fallen about half some days and about a third overall in the past two weeks.

The city says it is in discussions this week to determine what changes need to be made and ways to implement outreach to the population which has been reluctant to get vaccinated.

That concern is also being felt by Pima County Health Department.

In a memo released by the County Administrator Chuck Huckelberry, he says “we are now in a vaccination transition point” and goes on “today, we are seeing a drop off of demand.”

Although the county also points to a graph that shows vaccinations have been uneven from week to week since the vaccinations began last December.

This brings up why the county is pushing so hard for a FEMA site that could bring hundreds of thousands of additional doses to Pima County. With vaccine reluctance becoming an issue, the question is why would it be needed.

“Maybe it’s not one or two sites with a large supply of vaccines, that doesn’t matter as much now,” said Matt Heinz, County Supervisor from District 2. “Maybe it’s five, six, seven mobile FEMA pods running around every day changing locations”

Which is one potential solution. Taking the vaccine to the people rather than have the people search out and come to the vaccine.

“We could double maybe triple our capacity as a county with FEMA’s help to get out there with these mobile clinics into the community which as we’ve seen is where people are responding best right now,” Heinz said.

The state of Arizona announced it has 30,000 open appointments right now, 5,000 of them in Pima County.

Pima County will decide at its bi-weekly meeting on April 20, 2020, whether it will conduct a survey to determine why people are having vaccine hesitancy.

The county believes it needs to vaccinate about 70% of the community to achieve herd immunity but so far is only about halfway to that goal.