How Do I Sign Arizona Banking Presentation

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hi everyone we apologize for the late start this is our weekly briefing with dr kara krist on vaccine distribution a reminder that this is an on the record session and we're setting everyone up to record to ask a question after her presentation please raise your hand and zoom with that i'll turn it over to dr christ good afternoon everyone and thank you for joining us today for those that don't know me yet i'm dr cara crist i'm the director for the arizona department of health services and i hope everyone has had a great week we will follow the same format that we have in previous weeks i'll give a brief presentation and then i will leave time for uh questions and i will be able to stay a little bit later um due to the delay in starting and we apologize for the technical uh difficulties that we've had today so again i'm going to go over the the current covid 19 data here in arizona we have continued to see a decline in the number of cases reported statewide and so you can see that for the past seven to eight weeks we have seen a significant decline in the number of cases from a statewide perspective we're also seeing that same continued decline in our hospital usage and our covid like illness metrics that we monitor and you can find all of that on our dashboard at easygov or easyhealth.gov again this is our epicurve which shows the number of cases per day by collection date of their specimen along with mitigation strategies that have been overlaid um this will be updated uh after uh after this week you'll see new mitigation strategies that are put into place but you can see that those mitigation strategies that are in red were currently in place and then those that are in black are key dates that have impacted specific phases of the pandemic um this is a little bit different than the data that we portray on our summary slide this is the percent positivity of the total tests performed in arizona the dark gray bars are those that are tests that have been performed in unique arizonans we've had to date about 3.7 million unique arizonans so about half of all arizonans have had a covid test the light gray bars are those that are done in repeat arizonans and you can see that over the last several weeks we've seen a continued decline in our percent positivity with this week currently at 3.9 percent indicating that our community transmission is decreasing for covid19 all of these are very good signs that we continue to monitor but let's get into vaccine distribution this week on monday we had a vapac meeting vapac is our viral and anti-or i'm sorry vaccine and anti-viral prioritization advisory committee this committee convenes to provide recommendations to the department to ensure a fair and equitable vaccine allocation it's composed of state local and tribal experts and those recommendations inform the local allocation process that we use here in arizona um as we entered into uh vapec this week we had counties that were in various phases throughout arizona we had some that were still in the priority phase 1b um one county that had not moved to vaccinating over 65 and above we had counties that had moved into the full phase of 1b as well as two counties that had moved into phase one c and so as we look um at our previous prioritization um those circled are what are considered our prioritized 1b so that includes r1a which is our healthcare worker the prioritized part of phase 1b was our education and child care workers our protective services occupations and adults that were 65 and older we anticipated being in phase 2 which is when we the demand meets the amount of vaccine that we have available that's when we would transition to the general population between spring and summer of 2021. when we uh had the discussion with our county or with our vapac meeting you can see here these are the phase 1a and prioritized phase 1b populations in arizona that had been vaccinated as of february 28th you can see that statewide we about 60 percent of all phase 1a and prioritized phase 1b uh population had been vaccinated and you can see that there are varying vaccination levels among our counties darker red means higher percentages of uh the population it have been vaccinated and you can see that we break that out by the percent administered um with one dose and the percent of the population that is fully vaccinated and so you can see that almost 28 of arizona's phase 1a and prioritized phase 1b population have been vaccinated fully with the two doses we use our population estimates which use information from the the census bureau as well as some of our demographic information these populations may not take into account occupation from our tribal partners and winter visitors may or may not have been captured it depends on where their address of residence is located if they have an arizona residence they will be indicated in the county in which they reside then we took a look at individuals who were 65 years and older that had been vaccinated and again darker red means a higher percentage of those that have been vaccinated this is broken down by county but you can see for arizona on a whole we were at about 52.5 percent of our 65 and older population receiving at least one dose of vaccine with about 19 percent of them fully vaccinated and again those same estimate issues apply here as well we are using population estimates to determine the percent of the population that has been administered looking at the age group for the 55 to 64 year olds and this is really important um as we go into the next slides but we wanted to see how much of that population had already been vaccinated either being part of the 1a or the 1b prioritized population based on their profession or high risk and you can see that in throughout the state about 16.4 of individuals aged 55 to 64 have been vaccinated um with at least one dose and so um a good percentage of that population has been started to get vaccinated which is really important as we look at data that was presented by the centers for disease control and prevention so we know that your risk for severe outcomes of covid19 including infection hospitalization and rate increase with your age group and so you can see that um we knew that the 65 year and above had a significant increase in the hospitalizations and deaths but when you look at the 55 to 64 year olds they are still 25 times more likely to be hospitalized and 400 times more likely to die when compared to the their younger counterparts when you look at arizona specific data those arizonans that are in our 55 and older uh group include a majority of those with high risk conditions and severe covid19 outcomes so 65 of our hospitalizations in arizona have occurred in those that are 55 and above but 90 of the deaths have been in that age group in arizona [Applause] and so a recommendation was made to adopt a hybrid prioritization model for arizona to cover high-risk populations and our frontline workers some states as we've been watching have moved to a truly age-based prioritization we still wanted to make sure in arizona here that we were covering our frontline essential workers as defined by asip and cdc because we know that they have to um they have to interact with the public every day and these are uh positions that are critical for the community to continue um these would be our grocery store workers our agriculture our food and so we wanted to make sure that they had an opportunity to still get vaccinated while we moved through an age based prioritization and i'll walk you through a little bit more about what that age based prioritization is but as we looked at the um the math based on the number of doses that we are currently getting as a baseline we broke down the remaining populations for each of those age categories to determine what how much of the total arizona population with high risk conditions would be covered when we included that age group and about what time we thought we would be able to progress into that next age group based on the number of vaccines that we were getting and estimating about a 55 to 60 coverage rate and so you can see that um when we add 55 to 64 we're catching about 60 percent of all arizonans who have a high risk condition when we include that age group when we move to above 45 you can see that we're catching 70 to 80 percent of those with high risk medical conditions and then when we move to our 35 and older we move to about 80 to 90 percent of all arizonans that have a high risk condition that puts them at risk for uh severe outcomes of covid19 and as we move through we anticipate it's about three to four weeks to get through those priority groups especially as we're getting additional vaccine here to arizona we anticipate that in april we'll be able to transition to our 45 and above at the end of april beginning of may we should be able to transition to our 35 and above and then in may we should be able to transition to above 16 which is everyone who is eligible for the vaccine so for the age-based prioritization um what we worked through with vapec is that a the state would move to the next age group it could move earlier if the state reached 50 to 60 percent of the current age group vaccinated the age group applies to state pods the pharmacies and the fqhcs that are participating in the cdc federal pharmacy partnership program or the retail partnership program and counties are able to move earlier if they reach 50 to 60 percent of their age category that's vaccinated or if their demand slows down so as we look at those frontline essential workers this is a much more narrow group than our initial essential uh workers contained in arizona when we were using the previous phases essential workers would have included everybody on governor ducey's executive order as well as those that were informed by csu and asip these uh what we wanted the counties to do was to prioritize those frontline workers as defined by asip that do not meet the age eligibility that would be left to the discretion and the prioritization for of our local health departments they could sub-prioritize based on the amount of vaccine that they have by using occupational category age medical conditions or uh certain prioritization categories that they would that they would need and they could tailor that to the needs of their specific counties and so whereas maricopa may target grocery store workers yuma county may target some of their agricultural workers and there are different strategies that the counties can use to target those essential workers they could use prioritization by the local health departments utilizing the jansen or the johnson and johnson vaccine for our younger healthier essential workers to protect them quickly and because we know that they have constant exposure doing employer-based pods so working with some of those employers to offer on-site vaccination to their employees and then potentially looking at private groups that are open such as small business saturday for those small businesses that may not be part of a larger corporation that still have those frontline essential workers so for the definition of frontline essential workers they are defined by asip as a subset of essential workers and these are the ones that are at highest risk for work-related exposure because their duties require them to be face to face with the public less than six feet or their co-workers and so these asip examples include some that we've already covered such as our first responders correctional officers our education and child care but then it also includes food and agricultural services the united states postal service manufacturing grocery store and public transit as you get done with what is considered frontline essential workers there are other essential workers that can be included these would be included in a subsequent phase if the counties were able to get through their frontline essential workers but this includes transportational logistics water and wastewater shelter and housing finance those types of categories so the recommendation was made by asip to proceed with a hybrid prioritization which include included the age-based criteria as well as frontline essential workers this can be found on our website at azhealth.gov and so if if if you have any questions you can look there steve can um send it to you as well for the week of march 7th we expect to receive a projected total of over 2.2 million doses in total this next week we anticipate that actually starting as early as today the jansen vaccine could be in some counties but you can see what the march 7th week we got an additional amount of pfizer this week as well as an additional amount of moderna for a total allocation of about 323 000 doses we are told by our federal partners that we can continue this the minimum moving forward and we should not receive less than this except in our jansen we do anticipate there to be lower doses for about two or three weeks as the manufacturing catches up after that initial push out of vaccine so we may not see quite as much jansen for the next few weeks but our pfizer and modernist should stay at this baseline today we hit a milestone of administering over 2 million doses of vaccine in arizona we have vaccinated over 1.3 million unique arizonans and 711 000 of them are fully protected with two doses that number will um start to increase as well because jansen is a one dose series and so as they get vaccinated with that first dose those individuals will be counted both as a unique receiving at least one as well as a fully protected individual so you can see that the amount of vaccine that we we are able to administer continues to grow and we continue to make updates to the website and we continue to add additional vaccine administration sites statewide and so um tomorrow we believe that we will hit 500 000 doses administered at our state pod so the state pods have been responsible for about 25 percent of all doses administered in arizona but we have over 500 provider sites that have received vaccine and over 1500 long-term care facilities that continue to receive vaccinations they've provided over a hundred and five thousand vaccines so far and a hundred percent of our skilled nursing facilities have been visited once we expect this program to be completed in april and continue to look towards more pharmacies getting vaccine to participate in the retail pharmacy program and so uh fry's albertson safeway walgreens and cvs are all pharmacies that are participating in that program there are still limited amounts of doses that are going to that from our federal partners but as they get more they will continue to add more stores online this week many of you joined me for the opening of the chandler-gilbert community site as a state-operated pod that happened on wednesday march 3rd this is able to do a similar capacity to state farm and it has a potential to go 24 7 but because of the limited vaccine supply we're starting them with approximately 2 000 appointments per day and the hours of operation are 7 a.m to 5 p.m we are very excited the the site has been transitioning well we uh have partners with blue cross blue shield at that and um that was a really successful pod out in the east valley and we are so grateful to dignity health for allowing us to continue on with the pod they have they in maricopa county have provided a lot of infrastructure for us to continue serving the east valley and so that has been very successful we continue with our projects um on targeted communications so we are still um piloting our high intensity targeting targeted messaging campaign to the eight five zero zero nine zip code a couple of weeks ago we held a two teletown halls one in spanish and one in english we will be repeating that for the eight five zero zero nine zip code um this week or uh next week on march 9th and march 11th and again that includes a targeted social media effort using um assets that have been translated both in english and spanish and resonate with the community we are also placing yard signs and community messaging such on as bus stops and billboards and we're targeting vaccine registration and transportation as a pilot in that eight five zero zero nine so it's estima ed that about 4 000 individuals that are over the age of 65 live in that zip code we have been actively calling and going door to door to offer to register them for vaccination as well as provide transportation to the phoenix municipal vaccine sites so that they can get vaccinated so far we've had about 151 individuals take us up on that those efforts will continue and the vaccination events will happen next week at phoenix municipal stadium some exciting announcements this week governor ducey issued executive order 2021-04 this was issued on wednesday this required the department to update our school guidance to be consistent with the cdc's updated guidance and requires schools to return to in-person learning by march 15th or upon return of spring break our school benchmarks are now aligned with cdc's transmission categories and we will update these weekly on thursdays using the previous week's data so this is going to be a change um from the the previous benchmarks that we had been using previously we had been having a 12-day lag and using data to provide some consistency um and we required a a county to be in those meet all three benchmarks for two weeks in a row in order to either be in the higher or lower category this we are there are only two benchmarks it's case rate and percent positivity and it will be based on the weekly data of the week just prior so it will reflect more um recent data and will be updated weekly and it only requires it to be in that transmission category that week in order to uh account for that transmission category today governor ducey issued executive order uh 2021.05 this is the next phase of covid19 mitigation it removes the capacity limitation that was placed on certain establishments but requires all other mitigation strategies to remain in effect so that includes physical distancing of at least six feet ensuring that um patrons and staff are wearing masks the enhanced infection and disinfection pro are in disinfecting and sanitation protocols and it also allows spring training and major league sports to operate with an approved plan for mitigation strategies by the department of health services to be in place and followed and with that i will take any questions okay first up is per usual cameron palm hey cameron hi dr chris obviously today my questions are going to be related to the new executive order uh with the mitigation strategies in place uh the big question for especially for those who who have yet to receive any vaccine or haven't gotten their second doses yet you know we only have 700 000 people fully vaccinated yet give me give me an idea of what led you to believe that this is the right time to relax these mitigation strategies that have been proven to reduce the spread in our community especially considering potentially even more spreadable variants that scientists around the world are worried about that's my first question yeah thanks cameron that's a great question and so as we look at our data we've seen that our data has been trending in the right direction for quite a number of weeks now when you look at our total percent positivity we are below uh five percent which for percent positivity puts you in the the um minimal category as well as our covid-like illness metric has gone down significantly we are keeping all mitigation strategies in place except the occupancy uh requirement and so that had restaurants at 50 that had um movie theaters at 50 percent it had uh gyms at i believe 25 and what we've identified is as long as people are maintaining that six feet of distance and staying distanced and wearing masks at all times except when actively eating or drinking um we felt with the current community uh transmission that we could reduce those are you know just the the occupation or the occupancy um requirements that had been put into place restaurants have gotten very good about making sure that people are um so are physically distanced and um requiring them ask you so we wanted to be able to lift that portion of the strategy you know i have to tell you a lot of people on social media are already celebrating this as like the end of colbit and they're saying now remove the mass mandates so so does this send the right message to the to the large population who didn't want to see any mitigation in the first place and now a lot of that population is taking this as this is over do what you want so yeah so it you know i that brings up a really good point and we are not out of the woods yet i mean we are seeing positive trends we are increasing our vaccine administration but we still need arizonans to to take those same precautions which are remaining six feet away from people you do not live with wearing a mask whenever you are with people you do not live with and then making sure that you're washing your hands and that you're staying home when you're sick but what we saw when we we saw this most recent um spike back in december and january it wasn't necessarily the establishments or the occupancy limits that had an impact it was those people gathering in those small private settings where people were letting the masking and the physical distancing down and so it's it's a great reminder that we can't let that down but being able to lift this for our businesses as we are seeing improved metrics is is a key step forward my last question is regarding the sports venues so obviously that's a big question what will that mean as far as capacity with sports venues some of these are 50 000 seat arenas so does that mean i mean if you're doing social distancing what capacity does that truly mean so yeah so we've been working very closely with our sports teams and i can give you an example we've been working very closely with the diamondbacks on their mitigation um strategy and plan and so you know when you look at um their their mitigation strategies so they are going to require and enforce the use of masks they are going to do seating pods that seat groups small groups together with a minimum of six feet in between groups and you will see a much reduced capacity i think that six foot pod seating puts them at about 25 capacity and so in addition you'll see traffic flow they've added touchless um interactions between their staff and patrons and so you'll see a different environment at those but we'll be able to to bring people back to major league baseball thank you you're welcome next up is josh sanders hi josh hey dr chris a couple questions for you um let's uh first one list uh not executive order related okay so um 76 of arizonans are not vaccinated at state-run sites should the state allocate more vaccine to the counties so and and that is actually our plan and so you know right now what we're doing is we're keeping the pfizer vaccine which has those really stringent storage requirements at the mass vaccination sites some of those are state-run but some of those are county runs so while it looks like a lot of the pfizer is staying with the state that's because we're directly allocating to those county and state pods all of the jansen vaccine was uh allocated to the counties we expect that they will be able to use that in their communities and that's kind of our plan moving forward and almost all of the moderna goes to the counties as well and so we will continue as we get increased doses to give more and more to the community because what we want to see while we while we like the the state pods and the mass vaccination efforts that we've got there we do want to see more community-based efforts and so trying to get increased uh vaccine to our local partners is exactly what we want to do next question is two parts that it is in regards to the executive order today okay do you agree with governor ducey's executive order today so i agree that keeping the mass mandates and the physical distancing in place is an extremely effective way to slow the transmission of covid19 and reducing the occupancy which was you know we had we were trying to reduce the occupancy um to make sure that physical distancing was established what we've found is that there are instances where you can be six feet apart um but maybe be able to get a little bit more capacity in there and so yes we we are in agreement with the executive order five million arizonans have yet to be vaccinated so why do you think this is the time to lift those capacity limits yeah so all of the other mitigation strategies remain in place which are you know proven to slow the transmission so mass use the physical distancing the increased hand washing we will continue to accelerate our vaccine administration efforts and so as we've got reduced um transmission in the community we wanted to make sure that we were taking appropriate steps forward now this is not a return to normal it's just going to take um the uh capacity limits off of those establishments last question i spoke to a small business owner restaurant owner in downtown phoenix who says this is just purely political there's no way for their restaurant to operate at full capacity and still um have that those six feet in between you know their uh you know their their people uh well humble says the former mitigation requirements were just on paper as well and that you and the governor are just finally acknowledging through this executive order i realize this isn't your executive order but the governor is acknowledging that the mitigation efforts uh requirements when it comes to reduced capacity weren't really being enforced to begin with what would you say to them i i would say that there's probably some business owners out there that got shut down that disagree and so we do go out we still are going to have enforcement authority as well as our local jurisdictions um to enforce the mass use the physical distancing all of those strategies that are required with those establishments and so um you know we are going to maintain that um compliance program and that was exactly what you were saying from the small business you know it it depends on the location it depends on the seating arrangements but even at moving to requiring the six feet apart we're still not going to be at full capacity thanks for your work dr chris appreciate it thank you next is uh peter samar hi peter sorry this is a weird mask good afternoon so i wanted to ask a little bit more on the enforcements who's going to do the enforcements and who was perhaps measuring the restaurants and these other establishments that yes you can be full capacity and yes there's still six feet available i mean was there a tape measure involved i know it's a little tongue-in-cheek why i'm asking this but how is this all calculated yeah so um we will still continue to do the enforcement as well as any local jurisdictions or cities that were also participating in enforcement or one two moving forward and and it depends on the establishment so there are different ways that they can do that they could move them six feet apart if we got a complaint that they weren't our surveyors would go out and potentially yeah could measure between tables but if they went and they were seating every other table and every other table had been marked off then visually that they would know that it was greater than six feet so it's going to depend on the establishment and how they're implementing those protocols um you know there are certain requirements within movie theaters that will still be in effect to maintain that that six feet of distance but that is something that the surveyors would look for if that was the complaint and also um did you talk about the governor with this executive order before he issued it a couple of hours ago what kind of input did you give to this so i work very closely with the governor's team on on these mitigation strategies and um really felt that the the mitigation strategies that we had outlined in our documents for each of those individual establishments could be maintained without the the capacity limits and so as long as we are requiring the six feet of physical distancing and the mask wearing and those other things that we've put in there um we felt comfortable and so yeah i was i was working very closely with the governor's office on that was it your suggestion that we could go ahead with this executive order and all the contents they're in yes so in in reducing the capacity and maintaining all of those mitigation strategies that was our recommendation and lastly uh is are you concerned with spring break coming up i know i asked you this last week but now that we have this new executive order uh with no capacity limits with vacationers more people moving around spring break a lot of people off of course what i mean what does this mean for another surge potentially so you know any time people get together there's a risk for transmission of covid19 and so you know as long as the establishments are requiring the mask wearing and the physical distancing that should reduce the risk and we encourage all arizonans to make sure that they're taking those own precautions their own precautions so if you're at a restaurant trying to eat outside not removing your mask unless you're actively eating not sharing some of those you know like nuts or or the same out of the same container like sharing chip and dips and stuff and so um really taking that not going out if you're sick or if you've been exposed to someone with covid19 um spring break a lot of people will travel and so that always poses a risk when you're traveling um to other areas that may have higher transmission than arizona and then bringing it back so we would just caution everybody make sure that you're taking those simple precautions um but we didn't see a a spike after super bowl which was really great because we knew you know that's usually a time people get together in those small household settings um and we've continued to see a decline so that's promising very well thank you dr chris thanks peter next is a staff member at capital media services hi howie the entire staff of capital media services hi so no nachos but for you and me sir no not not right now no okay okay a couple of questions um i saw the list in the executive order which includes bars that do dine in service but the original order also covered bars that are just bars what changes for bars are they still closed so the the mitigation strategies are still in place so they are still paused until we meet the criteria for um them to potentially open so bars that are serving um providing dine-in services are able to open so basically bars that you have the bar stools dancing all that stuff uh we still can't go there so yeah so at this time we still can't go there um as we continue to review the data we'll see if if that's one of those mitigations you know strategies um that will be able to eventually open but they were closed until they were at three percent or below three percent um positivity okay um also there's some legislation making its way through uh got out of the house in fact to say that businesses can ignore mass mandates do you care to say what you think of such a law that would allow business to tell you what you could do with your mass mandate um so i'm sure you're tired of our phrase but we don't comment on pending legislation but it's inherent to what your own orders are i mean essentially this would undermine exactly what you're saying no well and and we hope that everyone takes our guidance and wears a mask whenever they are around people that they don't live with but i can't comment right now on pending legislation okay one more i'll give it a shot and this sort of follows up on one of my colleagues asked the fact is if you are going to require six feet between tables if you can require uh six feet between groups of customers in movie theaters and sporting events it's nice to say well we're getting rid of the occupancy limits but they effectively remain isn't this just window dressing so it will allow them to increase above that 25 or 50 percent and so it will provide them with um some additional relief but the the the physical distancing is a very important component of the mitigation strategies and so it doesn't probably allow you know 100 to 110 of the capacity but it will increase them a bit above their current t eir current ability okay i give up someday you're going to talk to me about what's in the legislature thank you guys next is alexis sperdin hi alexis hi my question is uh the u of a state-ran pod extended its hours we've had some viewers who've just been a little confused they want to know if longer hours directly translate to more vaccines more appointment plots and in that same premise will an increase in hours will hours increase and decrease rather as the vaccine supply does yeah that's a really great question so yes when we extend hours that means more available appointments and as we're getting a little bit more pfizer vaccine we're able to allocate more to to the pods so that they can provide more appointments so we're hoping that we won't actually have to reduce appointments moving forward what we're trying to do is over open up smaller banks of appointments so that we can be more responsive to those increases in vaccine um so we're hoping not to have to reduce it because we're told that this is our new minimum baseline but that but that is the anticipation is being able to respond to how much vaccine is in the community thank you okay next is juan juarez hi juan hi there good afternoon doctor thank you for having this conference um so yeah i just want to follow back on on on those businesses that now are going to reopen i mean a lot of us you know we are in and around the community so we've seen a lot of businesses that weren't really you know following the rules you know 100 percent we saw you know the different places i had maybe more than the capacity that was done so are you concerned at all about a spike in in cases i mean a lot of the population the general population especially the young population that those go out more uh you know than the other people are possibly going to be in crowded environments even more now than ever and then coming back maybe with their families and potentially causing more spread so is it the right time really for this i mean are you jeopardizing perhaps all the progress that was made after the holiday break yeah so we have made a lot of progress since the holiday break and i think um you know with the physical distancing and the masks mask requirements um those are really important strategies for me you know slowing the spread of covet 19. um we do go out and do enforcement and this will be something that we continue to monitor um and so we would recommend you know if people see a establishment that's not complying with that to to report that to us so that we can go and take a look i think right now as you look if we keep those mitigation strategies in place we can remove the occupancy that's one step closer to getting us back to normal although we're not there yet and so we'll continue to monitor and make recommendations as we see you know what each step does to our data and if the cases do happen to go up uh you know weeks after businesses start doing that would you guys go back and say you know what this was probably not the right decision i mean you would you expect to we haven't really seen any new measures since the summer we have that huge spike then the slow uh came afterwards and then we saw a huge spike again in the fall and and the winter but then there wasn't really anything done besides what was reduced during that time so we do see a spike a spike again after this decision do you are you going to do anything about it with regards to more limitations you know we have the vaccine but can there be more done now as you look at what other states are doing so there there are states that have done the entire gamut and we know that masks in physical distancing and those those strategies work but even those that had like put a ban on even outdoor dining they still saw the same spike that we did so it's really those those personal behaviors and making sure that you're you're not letting your guard down with your mask and not getting too close to people that you don't live with and so we'll continue to monitor i don't know that we would we would replace the capacity uh issues back on if we started to see a spike because i think the other thing that we have um going on at the same time is we will continue to see an accelerated administration of vaccine and hopefully by summer as long as there's not any manufacturing or federal uh transport issues we hope to have enough vaccine in the community for everyone who wants one um and so that's going to play a huge role in our mitigation as well thank you you're welcome thank you next we have bud foster hi bud hello there are you there yeah i can hear you great uh i'm very happy about that and thank you very much for doing this we really do appreciate it um the pima county sent you a letter on wednesday uh i'm asking you about uh the testing funding pima county is going to end their free testing on march 16th if they don't get funding uh you approve 14 million dollars again all the weeks ago they have yet to see a penny of that they haven't seen any money from you so they're still using general fund money and that will play a large part in their decision um obviously they don't want to do that but they would like to know why you are withholding the funds yeah so it's probably just a contractual issue i would need to go in and um see what was what was holding that up because they should have the 14 million but i'll check with the team and i'll have steve follow back up with you bud um and then we are looking at um finalizing the overall budget um and and looking to give the counties more funding on top of what they should have already gotten so we'll look into that for you pima county says that it has vaccinated a lot more people than any other county and they use the expensive pcr tests because they felt like it was the right thing to do and they feel like they're being penalized for making that decision are they being penalized for making that decision and kind of forcing them into a into a corner where they have to think about maybe ending the free testing which would set back obviously many of the games they've already made no i hopefully they don't feel penalized we are not penalizing them for making that decision they have done a fantastic job with the testing and so we enjoy working with our partners at the pima county health department we just don't have the ability to go back and reimburse but we are looking for ways to continue the the testing opportunities that pima county has built because we do think that they've been successful um but just like just like pima county does we have limited amounts of resources and we're trying to allocate it fairly to all 15 counties and so we take that into account but we think they've done a fantastic job they say that this money was allocated for this particular purpose for testing but yet it's not being allocated at this point they feel that that they are being singled out uh they don't i'm sorry they don't feel like they're being singled out because it hasn't been sent to any county yet why hasn't they been sent to any county at this point yeah so that would depend on where it was held up there there are several steps in the contract process and so we'll look into that for you but we our goal is to get the money out to the counties as quickly as possible and so if yeah just like you said if it's happening to piments probably happening to other counties so we'll take a look at that and see where it is all right thank you very much you're welcome uh stephanie innis hi stephanie hi dr christ um thanks for taking um our questions today i just wanted to ask you about the state's new rollout plan um when are uh people in prisons going to get vaccinated is that something that the state is doing or how is that being handled yeah so we're working with the department of uh corrections right now on their plan and so they will be implementing the aged based rollout as well um and and that should start relatively soon oh that's great and then just one follow-up question to the age-based roll-up so does that mean the state is not doing any frontline um vaccines anymore so that's solely up to the counties is that right so we will do based on um the way the pods are structured it's very easy up for us to verify age and those types of things so we felt for the the mass vaccination pods focusing on the age base would allow for that efficiency the counties are able to do some of those local based so like if you figure you know fry's food has a large number of grocery store workers but they also have a pharmacy and can receive vaccine so maricopa county and pima county or other counties may work with fries to get them allocated vaccines so that they can vaccinate their employees it would be strategies like that that the counties really are the best experts on determining how to get that out but we continue to look for strategies on how we can increase vaccine so if we start to to drop off we know that we'll also pick up some of those essential workers as we move into the next age category and so um this was one of the fastest ways to get the people with those chronic medical conditions but also those at highest risk vaccinated okay great got it and then one just the last thing is did you look at any other states as models for this hybrid or was it a recommendation from asip or how did you come up with this uh was it just the committee or what so it was a number of things and and it it's hard to point i i think as i look back so um you know we had heard of other states doing this connecticut is one of the ones that comes to mind as we were we were looking around but it also kind of came up organically through conversations at vapec based on the risk and the data that we had been seeing so we put that information together for them um and so it was a combination pretty much of all of what you uh described great thanks so much you're welcome next is monica garcia hi monica hi yeah i can hear you uh so our station has just been bombarded by people with um health conditions ranging from cancer hiv down syndrome you name it a lot of them are in their late thirties do they not have to wait until their age criteria is met before they can get the vaccine so what do you tell them a lot of it's going to be like towards april some folks in may yeah so that's a really great question and it's the same question we're getting a lot so there are very specific conditions and not all of the conditions you named places somebody at higher risk for covid19 and all of these i can guarantee you have been very difficult and stressful uh decisions that vapec has had to make in recommendations to the department um this will actually based on the timeline get those higher risk people with some of those conditions vaccinated faster because they won't have to wait until the entire list of essential workers which was extensive in arizona under our previous phases to be vaccinated because those with medical conditions weren't until 1c which maricopa county pima county we had not even moved into the essential workers and so this will prioritize those while still with that hybrid situation being able to vaccinate those essential frontline workers that have to come into contact thank you you're welcome okay next does cody lee hi hello dr chris i'm cody lee with cbs 13 in yuma um i have a couple questions real quickly um i know you mentioned that the jansen j and j vaccine will go to counties and rural areas around the state but as far as yuma county specifically what can you tell us um so i i don't know that i have specifics on yuma county using their um jansen for a specific uh population um i do know their their local health officer diana gomez is um on our vape hack committee and was very excited about the recommendation of the jams and the johnson and johnson vaccine coming online because it does provide additional opportunities it doesn't have the storage requirements it's one shot you know um utilizing that ins in our frontline agricultural workers that may um move around um is going to be highly beneficial right yeah that's exactly what i was asking about it definitely can be stored in uh less cool temperatures so i and another question i have my last question is yuma county obviously along the southern border um so our migrants crossing the border able to be vaccinated and will that affect residents who want to be vaccinated who live in yuma county so we don't require residency for vaccination in arizona arizona is unique in the fact that we have you know a high number of winter visitors in the winter from other parts of the country we are a border state so we know we have day workers that go back and forth plus we have a huge agricultural community here in arizona because of our weather and we are we do get those migrant agricultural workers that come in for the season and so we recommend that anybody who is eligible for vaccination to get vaccinated all that does is it provides more protection in our community because these people are going to be coming in and out of our community and are just at risk for bringing covet 19 in or acquiring povid19 once they're in our communities spreading it to others or potentially needing a hospital bed and so anybody who's in arizona and meets the criteria for getting vaccinated would be eligible um and we would hope that that opportunity would be afforded to arizonans in other places as well all right thank you so much dr chris you're welcome our last question is from rocio hernandez rocio hey good afternoon dr chris can you hear me i can okay good you just never know these days um i had a couple questions on the johnson johnson vaccine and the executive order on the johnson vaccine um what amount are all counties going to get the same amount because they're going to be divided between them equally or what percentage do you expect each county is going to get at the johnson johnson so the counties will get an allocation of the johnson and johnson based on their uh population of the state's eligible population um so it's broken down using a formula but each of the counties should get a pro rata allocation of the johnson johnson okay thanks and on the executive order i'm trying to understand what this means for sporting events i'm not a huge sports fan so hence my question and neither were some of my editors we were trying to understand because um even the cactus league and other pro-sporting events those have been happening even before this executive order so what exactly does this change for um spring training and other major league sporting sports and you know with the occupancy limit and does this mean that now the stadiums can be filled or or who's going to set how many fans can be at the stadium or bleachers yeah so that that's a really great question and as you look at um the cactus league had um based on the previous executive order where they had to get approval from the the jurisdiction that they were operating in um they had to provide a mitigation plan that had to be posted online so the the cactus league had gotten together with all of the cities and all of the stadiums in order to uh get approval to operate that approval does not expire with this new executive order we had previously reviewed their plan and had approved it after they had submitted it to us so what that will do is that will allow them to continue operating for things like the diamondbacks that will allow them to utilize their plan all of those plans um indicate that they will maintain uh groups more than six or like six feet apart whether that's um tying like using zip ties to keep the seats up so people can't move seats and they're restricted to their seating pod it does require masking and so that depends on each of the specific venues on how they're going to do it you know venues that have an open grassy field are going to be different than the the stadium style seating and so um they've developed plans for both of those uh different types of seatings that do require the six feet of physical distancing and so you will see much smaller crowds than we have seen in the past for those those types of activities okay everyone thanks for joining us today thank you dr christ and have a great day and weekend you