Clark County middle, high schools to host vaccination clinics

With mass vaccination sites set to close next month, Clark County health officials will offer COVID-19 inoculations at middle and high schools during the summer break in an effort to get more newly eligible adolescents on the road to immunity.

In June and July, vaccination clinics will be offered at four schools a day, or 16 per week, Southern Nevada Health District vaccination official Greg Cassell said.

When health officials double back to the schools three weeks later to give second doses, their plan is to also offer other vaccination shots needed for the upcoming academic year. COVID-19 vaccination isn’t required to attend school in Nevada.

The development was announced in a briefing Wednesday by health district officials, who encouraged parents to get eligible children inoculated as soon as possible against COVID-19.

“It’s going to be summertime. … You want them to enjoy their childhood,” said JoAnn Rupiper, the district’s chief administrative nurse. “You want them to enjoy getting back to being a teenager with their peers.”

The announcement came a week after regulators authorized the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for kids ages 12 to 15. The vaccine was first approved in December for ages 16 and older.

In a separate briefing, state vaccination official Karissa Loper said that nearly 6,000 12- to 15-year-olds in Nevada have received a dose of vaccine. This amounts to a little more than 3 percent of the approximately 177,000 adolescents in this age group.

Public health authorities are looking for ways to make shots more convenient at a time when interest in COVID-19 vaccination continues to decline.

The 14-day average for doses of vaccine administered daily across the state is about 11,000 per day, down from a high in mid-April of roughly 25,000, according to data on the state’s COVID-19 dashboard.

As a result, the state has cut back on the amount of vaccine it is now ordering, Loper said.

The health district’s two largest vaccination sites will close next month. The Las Vegas Convention Center site, which offers drive-thru and walk-in vaccination, will close on June 19, Cassell said.

A drive-thru vaccination site at Texas Station in North Las Vegas is scheduled to close June 21.

There have been some conversations about offering the type of over-the-top incentives for getting vaccinated seen in some other states, such as the $1 million lottery jackpots offered in Ohio, but they “never really grew legs,” Cassell said. In seeking financial support for such a program, “We didn’t get a lot of positive feedback.”

Rupiper said that research doesn’t support the effectiveness of this style of “bribe,” and said officials instead were focused on addressing the reasons people aren’t interested in getting vaccinated.

One upside to waning demand is that getting a COVID-19 vaccination has never been easier, said Cassell, who recommended neighborhood pharmacies as the most convenient solution.

“We don’t care where you get it, just get it,” he said.

Vaccinations also are being offered in Clark County at one-day pop-up clinics and through a program for homebound residents.

In Nevada, almost 46 percent of the population 12 and older has gotten a dose of vaccine, with nearly 37 percent having completed the vaccination process.

As of Tuesday, more than 2.1 million doses of vaccine had been reported as administered in the state.

Information on COVID-19 vaccination can be found at www.snhd.info/covid-vaccine and at www.NVCOVIDFighter.org.

Contact Mary Hynes at mhynes@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0336. Follow @MaryHynes1 on Twitter.