Vaccine Update in Pima County

Pima County announced last Friday that we’re now registering essential frontline workers and people who are age 55 and older. The change is because more than 50% of the people over 65 years old have been vaccinated. Now eligible are people who work in the food service industry, restaurant and bar workers, agricultural workers, grocery and convenience store clerks, public transit workers and manufacturing employees. That’s going to be a lot of people so plan on getting a confirmed date likely out into April. But getting in the queue is the first step. 

Pima County Health is also working directly with our utility companies and making plans to vaccinate their employees. That includes water, gas and electric. I’ve suggested they also toss in sewer/wastewater and our environmental services workers. As we just saw during the Texas freeze, those are all pretty ‘essential’ services.  

Use this link to register for an appointment through the county: www.pima.gov/covid19vaccine. And if you want to try the UA state site, register at https://podvaccine.azdhs.gov.  

As of last week, in Pima County over 330,000 people have been vaccinated, with over 130,000 having received both doses. That’s roughly 11% of our countywide population who are fully vaccinated. There are also about 110,000 people in Pima County who’ve had COVID. So, we’re just over 20% of our regional population with some level of immunity. There’s a long way to go, but as I showed in the graphs above, the trends are positive. This graph shows the age/sex breakdown of who has been infected in Pima County. Note the largest age range includes the UA student group. And recall the refusal on false pretenses of the UA to mandate off campus testing back when their zip code was the regional hot spot. If nothing else, that decision ‘helped’ us get closer to herd immunity.