COVID-19 vaccine distribution plan update: Health Officials looking for community feedback

||| FROM STATE DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH |||

OLYMPIA – The Washington State Department of Health (DOH) continues to make progress with our COVID-19 vaccine distribution planning efforts.

Today we posted our interim vaccine distribution plan. Now, as one component of a larger engagement strategy, the department is seeking additional feedback to help us understand the best ways to equitably distribute the vaccine as the department moves forward.

Throughout the month of October, DOH has been reaching out to the communities, workers, partners, and business sectors who have been most disproportionately impacted by COVID-19 in order to gather feedback for COVID-19 vaccine planning. We are using surveys, interviews, focus groups, and community conversations to gather this important feedback from key groups.

Key community groups include, but are not limited to, African American/Black communities, the Latinx community, Asian Americans, Native Hawaiian and other Pacific Islander communities, immigrant & refugee communities, older adults, people experiencing homelessness, farmworkers, people with underlying health conditions, and individuals with disabilities.

We are also engaging with people in sectors that are at higher risk for getting or spreading COVID-19. This includes, but is not limited to, essential workers and businesses, health care workers and providers, college students, youth, early learning providers, school staff, and parents.

With focus groups and key informant interviews underway with the key priority groups, the Department of Health is also offering two different general feedback opportunities:

1. The opportunity to provide feedback on vaccine prioritization and allocation. This opportunity has been available on the webpage and will be open until 11:59PM on Monday, October 26. This opportunity is available in English, Spanish, Russian, Ukrainian, Vietnamese, Tagalog, simplified Chinese, and Traditional Chinese. This timeline will allow us to incorporate preliminary feedback into our initial COVID-19 vaccine prioritization and allocation planning efforts, and is just the first of feedback opportunities.
2. The opportunity to provide feedback on the interim vaccine distribution plan. You can find the plan and submit feedback on the DOH COVID-19 vaccine webpage.

These are just the first feedback and engagement opportunities. We are committed to providing ongoing opportunities to engage with us as we prepare to distribute COVID-19 vaccine in Washington.

The department is committed to continuing the work necessary and when a vaccine is ready, we will be prepared to deploy it in a way that is equitable, safe, and timely for the people of Washington.