Plans halted for Arizona mass vaccination site

A county in Arizona has dropped its plans to set up a federally supported mass vaccination site after state and federal authorities failed to reach an agreement on how to run the site.

Officials in Pima County, Arizona’s second most populous county, said in lieu of the vaccination site they would request mobile sites from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) that could vaccinate up to 300 people per day and reach vulnerable populations, The Associated Press reports.

Had the vaccination site been set up, it would have been able to vaccinate up to 6,000 people per day.

“It’s an inconvenience for a variety of reasons because they don’t have the technology, they don’t have the time, because they don’t have the wherewithal, mobility issues, language barriers,” Pima County chief medical officer Francisco Garcia told the AP. “We need to decrease those barriers.”

The AP reports that one issue in talks between state and federal officials was the state’s desire to have a liability shield.

Cara Christ, director of the Arizona Department of Health Services, told the outlet, “We felt it put the state at a significant liability,” to go without the liability shield.

However the AP notes that FEMA spokesman Robert Barker had told local media that talks for support in Pima County were ongoing, adding that the agency “may have an announcement shortly.”

According to the Arizona health department, more than 2.7 million people, or about 38.5 percent of the population, has received at least one dose of a vaccine. The state has confirmed more than 855,000 COVID-19 cases and more than 17,000 related deaths.