54°F
weather icon Partly Cloudy

Southern Nevada utility workers climb COVID vaccine eligibility ladder

Updated February 17, 2021 - 10:24 am

Eligibility to receive COVID-19 vaccine has been extended to a new group in Clark County — and it’s not the 65- to 69-year-olds who have been waiting a month to have their number called.

Certain utility workers have moved up several notches in terms of priority and now can be vaccinated at Southern Nevada Health District clinics, district representatives confirmed Tuesday.

The development came to light when the City of Las Vegas amended a news release early Monday stating that utility workers would be eligible for shots at a vaccination site opening Wednesday at the Chuck Minker Sports Complex, in addition to the 70-and-older residents initially mentioned in a version released the previous day.

The Southern Nevada Health District “gave the city the go ahead” to offer vaccinations to power, gas, water and sanitation workers at the Minker location, city spokesman Jace Radke said in an email.

Health district representatives told the Review-Journal that not all utility workers would be eligible for shots.

“It is utility staff that fall under community support front-line staff,” an occupational group already eligible to receive vaccine, district representative Stephanie Bethel said in an email. As such, these workers “would support necessities of life” and “potentially have to go to people’s homes to provide essential services.”

“Community support front-line staff” as a category previously had not been interpreted as including utility workers.

Vaccine playbook

To better understand Bethel’s references, one needs to look to Nevada’s vaccine distribution playbook and its complex system for determining vaccine eligibility.

In the playbook, state officials have created two “lanes” for vaccine eligibility: one for occupational groups and another for the general public. In the occupational groups lane, those deemed part of the “front-line/essential workforce” potentially may receive vaccine before anyone else who wants a shot can get one. At the county level, the health district determines when new occupational groups become eligible.

In the general public category, age is currently the determining factor. Those 70 and older became eligible for vaccinations in mid-January. Those 65 to 69 will be next, with about two-thirds of states already vaccinating this age group.

In Clark County, the health district has extended eligibility in the occupational category from health care workers, the highest priority group, all the way down to a group called “continuity of governance,” a vaguely defined category that has been broadly interpreted to include most municipal and county workers.

Just above “continuity of governance” in terms of priority is “community support front-line staff,” described as “front-line workers who support food, shelter, court/legal services, and social services, and other necessities of life for needy groups and individuals,” such as food bank workers and state unemployment division personnel. Utility workers are not mentioned in the description, but under the new interpretation, some are now part of it.

Utility workers as an occupational group are listed six steps below the current eligibility threshold under “utilities and communications infrastructure,” a category that also includes journalists.

Moving up in priority

Health district representative Jennifer Sizemore said that the decision to make certain utility workers eligible was made after consultation with the state.

The utility workers who became eligible “support necessities of life,” said Shannon Litz, a representative of the Nevada Department of Health and Human Services, which drafted the vaccination playbook.

Litz noted that the playbook is a “living document,” meaning that it is subject to change. She also said that employment within a prioritized group does not confer automatic eligibility. Instead, only those front-line workers at higher risk for exposure to COVID-19 are eligible.

Sizemore said that eligible front-line personnel would “need to bring work documentation” to a health district vaccination site. But she did not respond to a question about how vaccination clinic workers would determine whether an individual was working on the front lines.

Neither the health district nor the state health department responded to a question about whether there was a particular circumstance that prompted bumping up utility workers in priority.

To register for the vaccination clinic at the Chuck Minker Sports Facility, visit https://clvminkervaccinesite.youcanbook.me.

Contact Mary Hynes at mhynes@reviewjournal.com. Follow @MaryHynes1 on Twitter. Review-Journal staff writer Shea Johnson contributed to this report.

THE LATEST