Henrico, Richmond health districts to begin receiving 61% more weekly vaccine doses

COVID-19 vaccinations will ramp up in a major way in Henrico and Richmond beginning next week, according to Richmond and Henrico Health Districts officials.

That’s because the districts will being receiving about 61% more vaccine doses from the federal government than they’ve been getting during the past month or so.

The RHHD expects to receive 10,180 total doses to use in the two localities next week and at least that many in subsequent weeks, RHHD Nurse Manager Amy Popovich said during a press briefing Thursday. The districts have been receiving 6,300 weekly doses.

The increase comes as part of a national increase in vaccine distribution – now up to 14.5 million doses weekly. Separately, more doses also are being distributed directly from the federal government to community health centers and to pharmacy partners in Virginia and nationwide.

Virginia pharmacies this week began receiving a total of 52,000 doses – all intended for seniors 65 and older – up from the 26,000 that had been going directly to CVS for the past two weeks. CVS will continue to receive that same amount, and the additional 26,000 weekly doses are being shared by more than 140 locations of eight chain and local pharmacies and grocery stores, including Food Lion, Walmart and Walgreens in the Richmond area.

A portion of the increase also is due to the fact that Pfizer now considers each vial of its vaccine to contain six doses instead of five, according to Popovich.

More relief is expected as soon as next week, too, if the Johnson and Johnson vaccine earns emergency-use approval tomorrow from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, as expected. The company is prepared to distribute as many as 4 million doses next week and as many as 20 million by the end of March, White House officials indicated Wednesday.

The RHHD continues to focus its vaccination efforts on people in Phase 1A (healthcare workers and long-term care facility residents) and those in the first three groups of Phase 1B (educators, public safety officials and residents and employees of congregate living facilities), Popovich said.

But good news is coming soon for the others in Phase 1B, she said, such as people 16 to 64 with pre-existing conditions: the agency expects to begin offering vaccine doses to them sometime in March, she said, without identifying a specific timeframe within the month. In the meantime, officials are working to prioritize the rest of 1B, she said.

“We’re still working through what the details of this will look like, but it will factor in age, and race, and ZIP code and level of exposure,” Popovich said.

As of Feb. 21, about 31,000 people 65 and older in Henrico and Richmond had been vaccinated (about 22,200 of them in Henrico). Popovich didn’t say how many people in that age range remained on the districts’ pre-registration list, but there are an estimated 84,000 people in that age range between the two localities, according to an analysis of demographic data from the districts.

RHHD officials are continuing to work from the list of people who pre-registered through the districts’ own site – before the state launched its new statewide pre-registration system last week – Popovich said.

“We have not yet pulled down fully from the vaccinate.virginia.gov list,” Popovich said. “We’re using our own list, to give some time for data integration and [list] cleaning to occur at VDH [Virginia Department of Health], but we certainly are assessing that total population number and the number we have vaccinated. And we feel good about the amount of vaccine we’ve been able to give.”

The number of new pharmacy locations in Henrico and Richmond that will be administering vaccine beginning this week is unknown; officials aren’t making those known publicly, since walk-in vaccinations are not available.

Though the CVS vaccine registration system is separate from the existing pre-registration lists of local state health districts and the new statewide list, RHHD officials have provided CVS with a list of some people from their own such lists, and CVS is contacting those people when it has extra doses available, Popovich said.

RHHD officials also are prepared to begin contacting people on their list to register them for events at partner pharmacies, if and when that is possible, she said.

In addition, the RHHD also is offering vaccines to some primary care physicians, she said, in order to reach the highest-risk citizens.

As a way to reach more minority populations locally, the RHHD has partnered with local churches and faith-based organizations that serve primarily minorities. At one mass vaccination event last week, half the spots were reserved for people from the RHHD’s list and half for people who registered through the faith-based outreach, Popovich said.

The districts are continuing to examine local ZIP codes with higher COVID case incidence and higher populations of at-risk citizens and are planning to establish at least one mass vaccination site in Southside and potentially other smaller ones as a way to reach the most people possible, she said.

It’s also made a focused effort to reach minorities who may barely qualify for senior status (meaning they are in their mid or late 60s) because Latinos and Blacks have shorter life expectancies, she said.