On Dec. 22, Verde Valley Medical Center began inoculating its staff against COVID-19, putting health care providers at the front of the line for receiving the vaccine.
Vaccinating health care workers is part of the Phase 1A scheduling, in accordance with Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Arizona Department of Health Services guidelines for vaccine distribution finalized on Dec. 1.
Spectrum Healthcare also began distributing the vaccine last week, both to its own staff as well as to smaller health care providers, such as private medical practices.
Out of the initial 3,000 doses of the vaccine made by the Moderna corporation that were received by Yavapai County in late December, 500 were allocated to VVMC, with 300 to Spectrum. According to VVMC, 220 staff members at the hospital have been inoculated as of Wednesday, Dec. 30.
Unlike a vaccine made by the Pfizer corporation and BioNTech labs, the Moderna vaccine does not require super-cold storage and is therefore preferred for distribution to rural areas such as Northern Arizona that have fewer specialty freezers.
The next people to receive the vaccine are supposed to be staff and residents at skilled nursing facilities, which differ from assisted living facilities in that they are primarily medical, dealing with elderly patients undergoing serious health challenges.
Assisted living staff and residents are set-up to also be in Phase 1A, but so far the state has only approved distribution for skilled nursing facilites.
But even with that authorization, skilled nursing facilities in the Verde Valley have not yet received the vaccine or begun inoculating their staff or residents. Haven, which has locations in Sedona, Cottonwood and Camp Verde, does not expect to begin vaccinations until later this week.
Unlike the health care providers, who got their doses of the vaccine through a shipment to Yavapai County Community Health Services, assisted living and skilled nursing facilities will be getting their vaccinations through local pharmacies such as Walgreens and CVS, which are getting their shipments of the vaccines separately from the county.
The CVS network started inoculating skilled nursing homes in Arizona starting on Dec. 28, but pharmacies in the Verde Valley have not received the vaccine yet as of press time.
Demand for the vaccine remains high, with public health officials and pharmacies saying that they have received numerous requests from the public that they are not able to fulfill. Under current plans, the next group to receive the vaccine after assisted living residents and staff are certain categories of essential workers, who are not expected to be immunized until at earliest late January, with the phase after that not coming until months later.
But as of right now, the timeline for even getting through Phase 1A in the Verde Valley appears to be uncertain, and complicated as well by the need for a second round of shots, for people who got the vaccine, four weeks after their first dose.
“We were told that [we would get] 8,100 and we got what we got,” said Terri Farneti, public information officer for YCCHS. “From what we understand, it’s been coming in less than what we were allocated.”
According to Farneti, ordering for the next round of vaccines began on Thursday, Dec. 31, but the success health care providers will have in getting a new batch of doses remains uncertain.
As the vaccine timeline remains clouded, the virus continues to spread throughout the Verde Valley. In the week from Dec. 21, through Monday, Jan. 4, there were 353 new cases in the Verde Valley, with 71 total deaths in the Verde Valley since the beginning of the pandemic.
