The Tower Mall vaccination site will reopen Friday as vaccine supplies continue to grow in Clark County
The county is receiving nearly 15,000 initial doses this week, in addition to the doses being administered on the Tower Mall grounds and Clark County Fairgrounds
VANCOUVER – A municipal vaccination station in the Tower Mall parking lot in Vancouver will reopen next Friday.
Clark County Public Health announced on Wednesday, adding that the number of people who can get a vaccination will increase from 600 a day to 840.
The communal vaccination station in the parking lot of the Tower Mall will reopen next Friday. Photo by Mike Schultz
The location at 5403 East Mill Plain Boulevard is a collaboration between Clark County Public Health, the City of Vancouver and Safeway Pharmacies. The doses administered at the site come from the Federal Pharmacy Program and not from Washington state.
It was open last Friday, Saturday, Monday and Tuesday and administered a total of 2,400 doses. The website will be open on the same days this and the next few days, with the aim of delivering 3,360 COVID-19 vaccine doses.
The county will continue to contact people on its COVID-19 vaccine waiting list to offer them a spot, and then open any available appointments to people who qualify starting Thursday.
The Washington Department of Health’s latest vaccine rollout plan. Image courtesy Washington DOH
During a meeting of the Board of Public Health on Wednesday morning, Dr. Clark County’s Public Health Officer Alan Melnick notes that the county’s vaccine waiting list had reached 58,691 requests, but of which only 4,559 remained.
“We went through this waiting list pretty carefully,” Melnick said, adding that an additional 8.4 percent of those on the list had been contacted but had already received a first dose elsewhere.
The county’s allocation of vaccines has also increased significantly since late February, when the CCPH and other elected officials released an analysis showing that Clark County lagged far behind other counties in terms of supply.
Clark County received 14,140 first doses of vaccine last week. That number rose to 14,907 this week, compared to a weekly average of 4,175 first doses prior to this month.
“So in two weeks we basically got 20,000 more vaccine doses than we would have received if we had (still) had the old allocation,” said Melnick.
As of last Saturday, a total of 80,263 vaccine doses had been administered in Clark County, including 32,824 residents who were fully vaccinated.
“There is some lag in the data,” noted Melnick, “so the numbers are definitely higher.”
Another improvement Melnick would like to see from the state is more extensive information on what vaccine shipments will look like.
Currently, the county is only given a few days notice of how much is being broadcast from the state.
“It was difficult,” Melnick told the board. “We are striving for a schedule that includes three weeks of allocation instead of every week.”
The state knows how much vaccine will be allocated by the federal government three weeks in advance.
The Washington Department of Health has been publishing three-week vaccine delivery forecasts since mid-February. As of last week, the state expected to receive 163,600 first doses and 146,110 second doses each over the next three weeks (up to 163,600 second doses by the week of March 21).
Johnson & Johnson deliveries are delayed
Washington received 60,900 doses of Johnson & Johnson’s one-shot COVID-19 vaccine, which was approved early last week, but does not expect further deliveries until the week of March 21.
Melnick called this vaccine a potential “game changer”.
While it has been tested to be slightly less effective than Moderna or Pfizer vaccines, studies have also been conducted on a larger basis during a difficult time in the pandemic and in regions where mutations of the original SARS-CoV-2 virus appeared.
“All of these vaccines are better than the number I’ve seen with a flu vaccine,” Melnick said. “Really, any of these vaccines will become available to anyone, whether it’s Moderna, Pfizer, or Johnson & Johnson, I’d get one of them.”
The exhibition grounds are open again for the first cans
In addition to the location in Tower Mall and increasing the supply to local vendors and mobile vaccination clinics, Melnick said the state-run bulk vaccination facility at Clark County Fairgrounds has reopened for first can dates for the first time in three weeks.
Another sign that the supply is increasing in order to meet demand in the region, according to Melnick, was that the appointment slots at the exhibition center were not full until Tuesday morning.
“Usually it was within minutes,” said Melnick. “That doesn’t happen anymore.”
For more information on local COVID-19 vaccination efforts and to request a COVID-19 vaccine, visit Clark County Public Health’s COVID-19 Vaccine website or call 888-225-4625. The public health call center is open Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.