Virginia opening vaccinations for all adults April 18

Everyone in Virginia who is eligible for a COVID-19 vaccine in Phases 1A, 1B or 1C will be offered an appointment for a dose by April 18 – the date on which the state will open the vaccination process to all adults statewide.

State vaccination coordinator Danny Avula made the announcement Thursday morning during a press briefing at Richmond Raceway, shortly after he received the one-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine.

Gov. Ralph Northam announced earlier that the state would move to Phase 2 – in which all adults are eligible to be vaccinated – by April 18, two weeks ahead of President Joe Biden’s May 1 national deadline for states to provide such access.

Henrico and Richmond yesterday entered Phase 1C, and officials expect to move through the people eligible in that phase who have pre-registered quickly. They contacted 7,500 of them yesterday to offer vaccination appointments, and only about 10,000 remain on the pre-registration list, Richmond and Henrico Health Districts Nurse Manager Amy Popovich said at Thursday’s press briefing.

The RHHD is administering about 12,000 total first doses of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines this week and 10,000 Johnson & Johnson doses. Moving forward, it is reserving 45% of doses for people in Phase 1C, 40% for those in Phase 1B and 15% for those 65 and older.

Those allocation amounts shift as the districts work their way through various groups. To date, about 73% of all seniors 65 and older in Henrico and Richmond have received at least one dose of vaccine, Popovich said. Seniors who have not yet been vaccinated can call the RHHD hotline at 205-3501 to schedule an appointment directly.

Avula, who is taking a leave from his role as the RHHD health director to serve in his statewide capacity, told reporters that he was excited to get his vaccine but said it wouldn’t change his personal behavior too much.

“It does mean that I can congregate in small groups with other people who are also fully vaccinated without wearing a mask,” he said. “But when I’m in larger groups or when I’m out in public, I’m still going to wear the mask. This is really important right now. What we’re seeing around the country is that cases are actually going up.”

In Virginia, the increase has been slight and levels have recently plateaued, he said, but elsewhere the rise has been concerning, as variants of the virus become more prominent.

“We should be on a downward trend,” Avula said, “but the reality with these variants is that we are going to continue to see disease.”

Speaking as hundreds of people filed into the raceway’s Old Dominion Building to receive their vaccines, Henrico Emergency Management Director Jackson Baynard praised the partnerships that have allowed the site to become Virginia’s chief example of how smoothly and efficiently the mass vaccination process can work. Henrico is operating the site in partnership with the raceway, while vaccines are being provided in part through Westwood Pharmacy with assistance from the Virginia National Guard, county and city agencies and others.

Sometime Saturday, the raceway will witness its 100,000th vaccination in less than three months of the site’s operation, Baynard said.

“We’re really excited about that, because it means together with all these partnerships we’ve done great work,” he said.’

The site’s “sweet spot” for vaccinations is about 7,000 a day, he said, but so far it’s been averaging about 5,000 a day.

“We want to put shots in arms,” he said. “We have the capability to do it, we just need the shots.”

The disclosure yesterday that some 15 million doses of Johnson & Johnson vaccine were ruined when a contractor mixed ingredients with the AstraZeneca vaccine gave Avula some initial concern, but he was assured by federal officials that the issue would not affect the 200,000 or so doses of the vaccine that Virginia is expecting next week.

Given that, he said, the state shouldn’t have a problem advancing through Phase 1C in time to open Phase 2 by April 18.

Some good news came yesterday, too, as Pfizer announced that its vaccine has proven highly effective for at least six months and also appears to prevent vaccinated people from spreading the virus.

“All of that is incredibly good news,” Avula said.

Vaccinations should continue in significant numbers through May and mid-June, he said, at which point most of those who want to be vaccinated – perhaps about 65% of the population will have been. Then, the effort of state health officials will turn to convincing those who are hesitant about the vaccine to consider receiving it, he said.

“The quicker we all get vaccinated, the quicker we stop the spread of disease, and that’s really our No. 1 goal right now,” Avula said.