Working directly with the State Department of Health, bypassing Pima County Health officials, the UA plans to open a state vaccine Point of Distribution (POD) on the UA mall. This will be detrimental to the county efforts to get vaccines into the arms of the most vulnerable in our community.
Since the pandemic began, UA leadership’s efforts to be ground zero for all-things-COVID have negatively impacted the surrounding community. They refused to mandate testing for off-campus students, falsely claiming a constitutional ban. The City and County funded the work. The UA invited students back into the region while the pandemic was surging. The result was the UA ZIP code becoming the countywide COVID hot spot. Now comes the UA sidestepping the regional health care authority and dealing directly with Gov. Ducey, establishing a campus vaccination POD. Vaccination doses going to the state POD will count against the county’s allotment.
This week the state has reduced the Pima County vaccine allotment by 40%. What the state takes for the UA POD, decreases the amount the county has to administer at other sites. A recent mobile vaccination site led by Pima County Health was conducted with the intent of addressing the disparity that exists in vaccine distribution. At that site, 72% of the vaccines given went to Hispanic residents. Hispanics constitute only 3.7% of people vaccinated at state-run POD’s.
The Pima County Health Department is the health authority for this region. The UA’s newest effort to gain attention, by becoming the local 24/7 state-run POD, will have a negative impact on the county efforts to vaccinate a diverse population. Including those unable to navigate the new state operated registration system. The vaccine supply is controlled by the state. The UA must not exploit its relationship as an arm of the state by effectively “skimming doses off the top” while the county continues operating in a position where demand is significantly outstripping its state allocation.
Steve Kozachik represents Ward 6 on the Tucson City Council.
This article appears in Feb 11-17, 2021.
The truth is that since COVID-19 hit the shores of the United States, governments at all levels could have been planning for the eventual and inevitable rollout of the vaccine.
Of course, it would have worked better if they had worked together, but thanks in no small part to the gross — bordering on criminal — mismanagement by the federal government, everyone else started working at cross-purposes in what amounted to a COVID-19 Thunderdome environment that pitted state and local governments against each other.
For Pima County, and Tucson specifically, the old pattern of EVERYTHING going to Maricopa county first is still the rule.
Having the University of Arizona working closer with the state government than the county government is unfortunate, but entirely predictable based on the politics of the situation — and that is the real point of the COVID-19 Pandemic.
From the beginning, instead of letting the scientists and medical professionals lead, politicians of every ilk have tried to make this life and death event into political currency for one cause or another. Meanwhile, people continue to get ill and die regardless.
But Mark Kelley just said we have the doses available but people are not taking the shots!
Steve, if the Pima Co website wasn’t such a cluster____k, PLUS the politics, no one would be taking anything away from Pima Co.
Kozachik is just pissed off at the U of A for laying him off his cushy job ….
My experience with Steve is that he may be unhappy he was fired after 30 years of service, without even a phone call, but he isn’t the type of person to complain about the U of A and the state skimming from the Pima County Board of Health unless it was in fact short changing the quantity of vaccines set aside for the entire county. Steve has worked very hard since the beginning of Covid to get students on and off campus tested. He has worked to end the massive student parties that are super spreaders of the pandemic. He has also worked to educate the community and expose the lack of culpability the university administration was willing to accept. My guess is that is why he was fired.
Arizona has gone from number forty-seven in vaccines administered per capita to number six in the nation in just three weeks.
These massive centers, driven by the governor, have been the reason.
C’mon man, Mark Kelley thinks we have plenty of doses, you just won’t sign up for the shots! You remember Mark, right? The flim-flam man for World View! How’s that venture working out for Pima county taxpayers?