Arizona health department adds vaccine data to COVID-19 dashboard

PHOENIX – The Arizona Department of Health Services on Tuesday added a vaccine section to its online COVID-19 dashboard, with provisional data on doses given, a demographic breakdown and more.

The daily dashboard’s new vaccination administration section shows the statistics that vaccine providers report to the Arizona State Immunization Information System.

The information can be filtered by county or to show the data for the state-run vaccine facilities. There are currently two state-run sites, at State Farm Stadium in Glendale and Phoenix Municipal Stadium. A third state-run site is planned for Pima County, Arizona Health Director Dr. Cara Christ said Monday.

The initial figures show 954,290 total doses given, 750,244 people who received at least one shot in Arizona, 192,684 who are fully vaccinated and total orders of 1,220,400 doses.

Our #COVID19 dashboard has been updated with additional data points in a new Vaccine Administration section. The dashboard now shows the age, race, ethnicity, and gender of those receiving the vaccine in Arizona. Visit https://t.co/SjW38nyOSG for details.

— AZ Dept of Health (@AZDHS) February 9, 2021

The chart of doses per day starts with Dec. 1, when nine shots were given, and goes through the day before the current date. The daily high mark so far was 43,658 doses administered on Feb. 4.

The race/ethnicity chart lists “other race/unknown” for more that one-third of the people who have received at least one shot in Arizona, making it difficult to tell how closely the vaccinations reflect the state’s overall demographics. ADHS spokesman Steve Elliott told KTAR News 92.3 FM in an email that the race/ethnicity data is self-reported by users.

The dashboard shows Hispanic or Latino people making up just 8.2% of those who have received at least one dose of vaccine. According to U.S. Census estimates for July 2019, 31.7% of the state’s population is Hispanic or Latino.

Christ said she doesn’t expect the demographics to align because the phased vaccine rollout is inherently skewed.

“For example, the distribution of age or race/ethnicity among the health care worker population, protective services category, and education and child care professionals is not the same as the distribution among the general Arizona population,” she said in a blog post.

Christ said the vaccination demographics should become more in line with the state’s demographics after the vaccine becomes available to the general population.

“State and local partners will continue to monitor this data to implement interventions to address gaps and increase access to vaccine among all groups in Arizona,” she said.

On Monday, during a virtual tour of the State Farm Stadium vaccination site, Vice President Kamala Harris asked Christ about what was being done to ensure the hardest-hit communities were being reached.

Christ replied by saying the state was working with community leaders to target hard-to-reach locations and demographics.

“We’re also working with our state’s Medicaid program to ensure that we’ve got non-medical transport available that they can use if they want to come out here to one of these sites or any other sites,” she told Harris and President Joe Biden, who also took part in the tour.

“And we’re also taking advantage of the CDC’s retail pharmacy partnership to make sure that we’re getting those vaccines into pharmacies in hard-hit areas, as well as our community health centers.”

For more information about statewide vaccine availability, the ADHS website has a vaccine-finder page with a map of locations and information about registration.

KTAR News 92.3 FM’s Gabriel Gamiño contributed to this report.

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