Grocery workers can now register for the COVID vaccine
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| The vaccination center at Inova Health System. |
The Fairfax County Health Department has expanded eligibility for the COVID-19 vaccine to three more subgroups in Phase 1b: people who work in grocery stores, manufacturing, and food and agriculture.
People in those groups can register for a vaccine appointment here. There’s also a new form for registering in Spanish.
The expansion of the eligible population is due to a big increase in the amount of vaccine doses Fairfax County is receiving from the state. The county received 43,000 doses this week, up from 31,000 last week. So far, 268,944 people have been vaccinated in Fairfax County.
The three new groups are added to those already eligible to make a vaccine appointment: people age 65 and over, those age 16-64 with a high-risk medical condition, and frontline workers (police, fire, hazmat, corrections, homeless shelters, K-12 schools, and childcare).
While the Virginia Department of Health announced March 16 that some localities in Virginia have moved into phase 1c, Fairfax County isn’t there yet. Phase 1c includes other essential workers, including public transit workers, mail carriers, officials needed to maintain the continuity of government, faith leaders, and cleaning/janitorial staff.
Fairfax County Board of Supervisors Chair Jeffrey McKay says the county might be able to make the transition to 1c by mid-April. Phase 2, which includes everyone age 16 and over, is expected to begin by May 1.
According to the CDC, the grocery store category includes people who work in food and beverage stores, warehouse clubs, supercenters, convenience stores, grocery shopping services, and retail stores that sell food, and people who sell food at farmers markets.
The food and agriculture group includes people who work in agriculture, forestry, fishing, and hunting; beverage and food manufacturing; nursery, garden, and farm supply stores; veterinary services; ABC stores; butcher and slaughterhouse workers; food banks; food pantries; food distribution sites; and wholesale producers of meat, vegetables, and foods
The manufacturing category includes manufacturing workers in asphalt paving, roofing, and saturated materials; chemicals; computers and electronics; electrical equipment, appliances, and components; fabricated metal products; industrial machinery; medical equipment and supplies; nonmetallic mineral products; petroleum and coal products; paper, plastics, and rubber products; primary metal; transportation equipment; wood kitchen cabinets and countertops; wood products; and other miscellaneous manufacturing.
LOL
They can now register.
Yes, go ahead, register for an appointment.
more like
"Register for a weekly email from our incompetent county, telling you another week went by and you still won't get scheduled an appointment"
What a sad joke.
Fairfax County has consistently had a lower percentage of people vaccinated than the state-wide average.
Could you show me a source for that, please? I'd like to know more.
As of Monday, Fairfax and Alexandria have fully vaccinated more than 10% of their population, while Arlington has vaccinated roughly 8.5%. [Arlnow.com]
–kda
I don't understand why fairfax county can't pick up the pace. My brother who leaves in Alexandria( not at high risk) was able to sign up w the state of VA appointment registry for vaccine.
So I registered the day after they opened the door. I checked back once they had a tool to let me know when I was set to go. I was repeatedly told that they were still working on the first day's list. I believed them. Then, one day, they indicated they were working on the second day's list. I got an email from the County Health department, made my appointment. On the specific day, I went to GM and got my first shot. Now I am waiting for my second shot. How is this experience a reflection of governmental incompetence and not small supply? Truly wondering.
I have had a similar experience. Ever since they got past that initial monday’s 1b deluge, the county has been really moving along quickly. If you are paying attention, their pace of vaccinations are accelerating. The supply is steadily increasing, and they are moving faster and faster through the backlog.
James, I'm glad you had a positive experience. But when evaluating the competence of the Fairfax County Department of Health we should look at the overall performance of getting our 1.5 million residents vaccinated.
Anonymous, I get my information from the Virginia Dept. of Health website (https://www.vdh.virginia.gov/coronavirus/covid-19-vaccine-summary/). As of today, that site reports 21.6% of Virginia residents have been vaccinated with at least one dose.
If you click on the state map you can see how many per capita have been vaccinated in each county. For Fairfax County there have been 18,372 per 100,000 residents, or 18.3% of Fairfax County residents. Arlington County has vaccinated 16.7% of its residents.
So while James may have had a good experience, and we may be doing better than Arlington, Fairfax County overall is underperforming the Virginia statewide average. I check VDH website daily and Fairfax County has been consistently below the average for several weeks.
Doesn't change his fundamental assumption that it could be a supply problem. It's much easier to vaccinate rural VA where the population isn't near as dense. I'd wonder if 18% is any better or worse than any other metro area.
It could be a supply issue. But from what I understand, the supply constraint is affecting all the states. I've seen nothing that would suggest the State of Virginia is making more vaccines available to the smaller counties.
I would think larger counties have an advantage in that they have more resources available (larger health departments, hospitals). Also, I suspect most people in Fairfax County live within a mile or two of a vaccination site; which is not true in rural areas.
The second largest county, Virginia Beach, is at 18.9% (today's percentage for Fairfax is 18.8%). I have heard that the more eligible categories a jurisdiction has the more time consuming it is to administer the vaccines. It could be that the smaller counties have opened up vaccinations to everyone in Category 1b, while the large counties are only opening up the 1b group in smaller chunks, which could slow down the process.
It's an interesting question and I'd like our government leaders explain why the discrepancy in vaccinations rates. Just for comparison sake, rural Lancaster County (eastern Virginia) has vaccinated 37.7% of its residents–more than twice the rate of Fairfax.
They don’t need to make more available for smaller counties for their PER CAPITA numbers to look great. Take for example the county you mentioned, they’d only need to administer 5000 vaccines to hit that 38% my point is it’s easy for small counties to have great rates because the denominator is small. I’m curious to see how other metro areas similar to ffx are doing across the country.
When I took my mom to get her first shot, I learned that roughly 40% of Fairfax County fits the 65+ category. We got an appointment at an almost-empty, small government center in Fairfax County but far from her district, but I had been browsing other counties (and even Maryland) for availabilities. Without a deep analytical dive into the dashboards, I think it's not smart to conclude that everyone is getting their vaccinations in the same counties in which they live. In fact, VDH officially stated in January that while the vaccines Virginia has/gets are intended for Virginians, and though some form of identification is required, open clinics will not require proof of local residency.
My sister-in-law, who's 70+ years old and living Chesterfield County (near Richmond), just got vaccinated in a small clinic in Chesterfield. It took less than 15 minutes, but her husband (61 years old) went to Petersburg, VA and had to wait in line for more than an hour at a big facility that most would expect to be more efficient by now. Other large centers I know of, including here in Fairfax, are processing people with no wait-time at all.
There are all kinds of factors involved; it's easy and perhaps tempting to assume all or most of them are equal, proportional, consistent, etc. because we want to make sense of it all, but clearly they aren't.
–kda