Below is the official statement from the Director of Yavapai County Community Health Services about the situation with getting shots into the arms of Yavapai County residents.

In Yavapai County, we are working to establish vaccination locations and offerings in order to accommodate the needs of our residents. Both hospitals and approximately 25 other local healthcare providers have signed up as vaccine providers as of now. We will also be rolling out a CDC Retail Pharmacy Partner program in the coming weeks (maybe as early as Jan. 19th) that will allow our local pharmacies to carry and administer vaccines. Currently, vaccinations for the Phase 1a groups (healthcare providers and healthcare support occupations, Emergency Medical Service Workers, and Long Term Care facility residents and staff) have been conducted by YCCHS, YRMC, VVMC and Spectrum Healthcare and are our priority. We are hoping to have many of these other local providers and pharmacies on-board by the end of January to help with the phase 1b populations. More information will be posted to our website at www.yavapai.us/chs as we have more updates on when, where and how people can sign up or show up for vaccinations.

For now, we are asking the public to be patient. We are only being allocated 3,900 vaccines per week in Yavapai County, and the 1b population alone is over 70,000 individuals. This is going to take us weeks, if not months to work through the 1b populations with such a limited vaccine supply. We are hoping to start vaccinating 1c populations in Spring of this year, unless more vaccine is made available to us, allowing us to expedite the process. We are currently updating our website with information, and will have more updates in the coming weeks. Please stay tuned, and we will continue to work hard to roll out the vaccine as efficiently and effectively as we can with the limitations we are facing.

Sincerely,
Leslie Horton, MA, MCHES
Director
Yavapai County Community Health Services