Fairfax Health District Vaccine Distribution Process To Follow New State Guidelines

Press release from the City of Fairfax:

02/01/2021

On January 27, Gov. Ralph Northam announced new guidelines for how local health districts should allocate the doses they receive weekly from the state. (Click here to review slides from that presentation on the governor's web page.)

The Fairfax Health District, which includes Fairfax City, will follow these protocols moving forward.

While local health districts are allowed flexibility in how doses are administered, the Fairfax Health District will use roughly half of the available supply each week for people 65 and older. The other half will be allocated for people eligible in the other categories, including individuals 16-64 with a high-risk medical condition; frontline essential workers (such as teachers, childcare staff and public safety employees); and people living in correctional facilities and homeless shelters.

The Virginia Department of Health expects to receive 105,000 doses of COVID-19 vaccine each week and distributes those on a per capita distribution to jurisdictions. Based on our population, the Fairfax Health District currently receives 13,600 doses per week. The federal government has indicated that supply to states may increase soon by about 16 percent, but that has not happened yet.

Upon receiving vaccine from the state, the Fairfax County Health Department reviews the needs in the Fairfax Health District to vaccinate those eligible in the 1a and 1b priority groups and allocates the vaccine to health department clinics, health system partners, safety net partners, and occupational health providers who are vaccinating essential frontline workers.

The health department works closely with these partners to ensure that the priority groups are being vaccinated based on people’s eligibility and when they registered to get an appointment. This includes our commitment to K-12 public and private school teachers and staff, who are currently being vaccinated by Inova.

Thank you for your continuing patience — it will take months to vaccinate all of those who are eligible and currently registered to get a vaccine appointment, and the health department and its partners are working as quickly and efficiently as possible on this important effort.

This press release was produced by the City of Fairfax. The views expressed here are the author’s own.