Vaccine Distribution Equity Touted At Fairfax County Town Hall

FAIRFAX COUNTY, VA — Fairfax County is making progress with getting its residents vaccinated, but still has more demand than supplies of the COVID-19 vaccine, according to county officials.

More than 405,000 residents have registered on the county’s website to get vaccinated and 40,000 people are still in the queue, county officials said Thursday night. Unlike other jurisdictions across Virginia where residents sign up using the state's registration system, Fairfax County, with its independent health district, requires its residents to use the county health department's vaccine registration system.

“We could be administering a lot more vaccines now if we had more vaccines,” Fairfax County Board of Supervisors Chairman Jeffrey McKay said Thursday at a virtual town hall on equity in vaccine distribution in the county.

McKay said Fairfax County has set up three “equity vaccine centers” and plans to establish more of them as the county receives larger supplies of vaccine doses. The county also plans eventually to get mobile vaccine clinics — similar to its mobile testing clinics — up and running as soon as vaccine supplies increase.

Fairfax County has been working with schools, community centers and houses of worship to administer vaccines.

Starting next week, the county is planning to set up vaccine clinics at apartment complexes, Dr. Benjamin Schwartz, director of the Division of Population Health & Epidemiology at the Fairfax County Health Department, said during the town hall.

Groups in Fairfax County, including Rowan Tree, Virginia Latino Advisory Board, Black Women United for Action and Network NOVA, organized the town hall with Fairfax County. The groups wanted to hold the town hall to address vaccine distribution among Latino and Black communities in Fairfax County.

This week marked the start of phase 1c COVID-19 vaccinations for many of Northern Virginia's health districts as they face an April 18 deadline to open eligibility to anyone 16 and up. The Fairfax Health District, which covers Fairfax County and the cities of Falls Church and Fairfax and the towns of Vienna, Clifton and Herndon, opened registrations for half of phase 1c workers on Monday. Registrations for remaining 1c workers opened on Wednesday.

Schwartz said the county will be opening eligibility to anyone 16 and older on April 18, consistent with the state and national requirement.

SEE ALSO: How To Get The COVID-19 Vaccine In Virginia

Despite the concerns about vaccine availability, Fairfax County has been gradually getting allocated more vaccine supplies. During the last two weeks of March, the county had supplies to administer 3,000 doses each week to communities where people are more vulnerable to COVID-19. During the first half of April, the county has received more supplies and is expected to average 5,000 doses administered per week in these communities, Schwartz said.

McKay addressed how the Fairfax County’s independence from the Virginia Department of Health has proved beneficial in some ways. “Our independence has been helpful,” he said.

The county, for example, is “far advanced” over the Virginia Department of Health in delivering materials about COVID-19 and the vaccine in languages other than English, he said.

McKay also noted that Loudoun and Prince William counties, after seeing the successes of Fairfax County in handling the COVID-19 pandemic, successfully lobbied the state to establish their own independent health departments like Fairfax County, rather than continuing to rely upon the state-run health districts employed in most of the state.

Among the lessons learned from the pandemic is that large counties that are sufficiently organized to operate their own health departments can get operate more nimbly in a public health crisis.

These health districts still must follow any public health rules issued by the state, McKay emphasized.

The General Assembly passed Gov. Ralph Northam’s amended version of Senate Bill 1221 on Wednesday. The original legislation, which unanimously passed both houses of the General Assembly earlier this year, allowed Loudoun County to enter into a contract with the Virginia Department of Health to locally provide public health services.

Northam’s amendment added Prince William County, Manassas and Manassas Park after the localities submitted a request to his office in March.

Since the start of the pandemic, Fairfax County's capacity to communicate to residents in multiple languages has grown significantly, Karla Bruce, chief equity officer for Fairfax County, said during the town hall.

Fairfax County's medical reserve corps, whose member have volunteered their time to help during the pandemic, can communicate in many of the languages spoken in the county, Bruce noted.

One of the silver linings of the county's response to the pandemic is what it has learned about communicating messages in multiple languages, she said. These communications strategies can be used for other purposes in the future after the pandemic is under control.

Town hall participants asked McKay about holding a town hall in Spanish to reach a large part of the county's population. The board chairman said he would be open to the idea.

Churches and other faith-based organizations can email Ramona Carroll, Fairfax County's interfaith coordinator, if they are interested in becoming a site for a vaccine clinic. Carroll's email address is Ramona.carroll@fairfaxcounty.gov.

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