As vaccine continues to ‘trickle’ in, Whatcom ‘moving at the pace we are based on supply’
Nearly a month after Whatcom County began COVID-19 vaccinations, supply continues to “trickle” into the county, county health officials said Wednesday, and the county has been allocated a little more than 9,000 doses to this point.
Of those, approximately 800 were shipped this week, Whatcom County Health Department Health Information and Assessment Supervisor Amy Hockenberry, who is leading the county’s vaccination efforts, said during an online briefing Jan. 13.
At a briefing last week, Hockenberry reported the county had approximately 5,900 doses, meaning its supply grew by a little more than 50%.
“This is not for lack of administration,” Whatcom County Health Department Director Erika Lautenbach said during the briefing. “It’s not for lack of providers that are ready and willing to provide vaccines. We are moving at the pace we are based on supply.”
Supply has been limited by what has been allocated to the state through federal Centers for Disease Control and then state Department of Health guidelines, Hockenberry said.
The state “weighs a multitude of criteria” in deciding how to allocate vaccine to local health agencies across the state, Hockenberry said, including the number of enrolled providers eligible to administer the vaccine and the number of Phase 1A recipients in each community.
Last week, Hockenberry estimated Whatcom County has between 14,000 and 16,000 potential Phase 1A recipients in the Washington State Department of Health’s Vaccine Distribution Plan. That means Whatcom has slightly more than half the vaccine it needs to cover its 1A recipients.
The county is still hoping to wrap up Phase 1A vaccinations in the next few weeks, Hockenberry said, and move on to Phase 1B, which the state announced last week will be set up in four tiers.
“We’re hopeful that (Whatcom’s allocation) will speed up, particularly with the new administration coming in,” Hockenberry said. “But there is a fine balance between opening up for more people being eligible and the supply being limited at this point.”
Whatcom County currently has 17 sites approved as enrolled providers, Hockenberry said, and more than double that number have applications pending.
She added that some of the county’s larger healthcare providers have paired together and begun planning for a larger-scale community vaccination clinic.
“This commitment is an important first step, and I applaud their ability and are very grateful for the way these healthcare providers have stepped up to the challenge of getting our community vaccinated,” Hockenberry said. “We’re in the very early stages of this planning, and I’m sure we’ll share more details in the coming weeks.”
The county still doesn’t have a way it feels confident about reporting data on the number of vaccinations administered, Hockenberry said, but the Washington State Department of Health’s dashboard should start including that county-level data soon.
All of Whatcom’s skilled nursing and assisted living facilities have been paired with a pharmacy to administer vaccines to residents and staff, and all have either been scheduled or have already received their first doses, Hockenberry reported.
