State reports almost half have initiated vaccination

Nevada COVID-19 response director Caleb Cage and Karissa Loper, bureau chief for the Bureau of Child, Family and Community Wellness were joined by Heidi Parker, executive director of Immunize Nevada, on Wednesday to provide the daily update on Nevada’s ongoing COVID-19 response and vaccination efforts.

As of May 4, 46% of the population 17 and older have initiated vaccination, and 34% have completed it, they said, and the test positivity rate over the past 14 days is 5.7%. The state has logged 317,088 cases, with the 14-day rolling average at 248.

Mobile vaccination units have completed their first route and will be returning to administer second doses of Pfizer and also provide the opportunity for people to be vaccinated with the one-shot Janssen vaccine. Almost 2,900 doses have been administered on the northern route and a little more than 2,100 doses have been administered on the southern route so far.

The northern MVU will be in Lovelock on Friday, and the southern unit will be in Tonopah on Friday.

Currently, 275 providers are fully enrolled with the Nevada State Immunization Program to receive COVID-19 vaccine, and that list is growing each week. Hospitals, family practices, OB/GYNs, specialty providers, pediatricians, rural health clinics, occupational health centers and other provider types are all enrolled and able to order vaccines.

More than 97,000 doses have been delivered to private provider types in 11 counties. Providers can enroll to serve their own patients as well as host public-access clinics depending on their office capacity.

To make scheduling a COVID-19 vaccine appointment and getting information about the vaccine more accessible, live chat support was recently added to NVCOVIDFighter.org, Nevada’s statewide COVID-19 vaccine information and appointment scheduling hub. Since live chat soft launch was added to the website April 23, there have been more than 1,500 chats, and representatives are responding in 8 seconds, on average.

The effort was a collaboration between Immunize Nevada and the Nevada Department of Health and Human Services, Division of Public and Behavioral Health.

The live chat is staffed by the same team that manages Nevada’s vaccine hotline. As with the hotline, representatives can answer questions, help users navigate the website and help schedule COVID-19 vaccine appointments.

Nevadans can access important information about COVID-19 vaccines and appointments independently via the website NVCOVIDFighter.org; over the phone using Nevada’s vaccine hotline at 1-800-401-0946, 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. daily; and through the live chat at NVCOVIDFighter.org, 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. daily. In off-hours, users can send an email via the chat, and representatives will respond when they return.

Google Translate is integrated into the live chat feature, so chat representatives will be able to accommodate multiple languages.