How Henrico Health District is prioritizing senior citizens for COVID-19 vaccine

The Richmond and Henrico Health Districts administered 15,239 doses of COVID-19 vaccine during the past week, as they continue to work their way through a list of more than 104,000 people in Henrico and Richmond who have expressed an interested in being vaccinated during Phase 1B of the process, RHHD officials said Monday.

Sunday’s snow storm forced the delay of the third day of a planned three-day mass vaccination effort for seniors in the region, but the 2,500 doses scheduled for Sunday will be administered during an event Tuesday instead, RHHD Nurse Manager Amy Popovich said during a Facebook Live briefing.

The RHHD had been receiving 6,400 doses per week from the state but this week received 6,300 because of an adjustment by state officials, she said. All states will begin receiving about 16% more doses next week from the federal government, which likely will result in at least several hundred more doses for the RHHD, though Popovich said local officials aren’t yet sure. The RHHD currently is prepared to vaccinate about 25,000 people weekly but lacks the doses to do so, she said.

Officials are working Monday to fill the remaining 1,500 or so spots for Tuesday’s vaccination for seniors, Popovich said. Additional events are planned later this week, as well.

The doses administered last week included:
• the 6,400 provided by the state last week to the RHHD;
• thousands of other doses provided by the state to nearby health districts but administered by RHHD to residents of those localities at regional events;
• other doses provided by local health systems.

Henrico County continues to be second statewide in the total number of residents who have received at least one vaccine dose – just more than 36,000 (including more than 5,000 who are now fully vaccinated), according to the Virginia Department of Health.

The RHHD is allocating half of its weekly allotment of doses to senior citizens 65 and older; 40% to frontline workers such as public safety and education employees; and 10% to residents and staff members of congregate living facilities, such as shelters and jails.

Within the senior category, officials are using three main factors to prioritize those who have completed interest forms (at http://vax.rchd.com), RHHD Health Equity Director Jackie Lawrence said; age first, race second and sign-up date third. That’s because the oldest citizens are the ones who tend to be most negatively impacted by the virus, followed by Blacks and Hispanics, she said.

A group of RHHD employees, including a leadership team and Lawrence and her equity team, are responsible for determining who is eligible to be vaccinated each week, Popovich said.

Those whose names are pulled each week are emailed and, if necessary, called twice by RHHD officials in an attempt to register them for a vaccination event, Popovich said. But if those three attempts don’t work, the callers will move onto others, she said.

But, “if you missed a phone call or missed an email and didn’t get it in time, you are not removed from the list – we will reach out to you again,” Popovich said.

Many people have expressed a desire to know that their completed interest forms actually were received. The only currently confirmation, Popovich said, is a screen that says “Thank you” and provides more COVID-19 information, but officials are working to improve upon that.

“We are looking into systems that could send out automatic receipts and email updates,” Popovich said. “We’ve had to build these registration and communication systems from scratch at the local level.”

This week, RHHD officials also are beginning to reach out to seniors who live in the 50 or so independent living facilities in Henrico and Richmond, Lawrence said, and they’re prioritizing them for their mobile vaccination clinics in this order:
• those who live in government housing;
• those who are served by Medicare;
• those who have private insurance.

The health districts also are planning to begin an outreach campaign within the community in the coming weeks to help educate and inform citizens about the vaccination process, Lawrence said.

Officials also are working diligently to record race and ethnicity data from more of those people who are vaccinated, Popovich and Lawrence said. Screeners at vaccination events are charged with reviewing registration and screening information and ensuring, as best as they’re able, that those who receive shots have completed their full demographic profiles, Popovich said.

To date, Virginia has administered 718,823 doses of COVID-19 vaccine but has recorded race and ethnicity data for only 60% of those – and 72.5% of those who have completed it are white, while just 10.7% were Black and only 6.2% were Latino, according to the state’s data. Local health district officials have demographic data for those they’ve vaccinated in Henrico and Richmond, but Lawrence said she didn’t have it with her during Monday’s briefing.