Member-only story
Fairfax County has announced that it abruptly has a shortage of vaccines and will have to suspend appointments for first doses.
This would be convincing if not for the startling fact that Virginia has fallen far behind the rest of country in terms of distributing its allotted dose. The NYT shows Virginia well below average, with 51% successfully jabbed into someone’s arm, while Becker’s Hospital Review just moved us up from 50th to 49th at 45.15%.
The Washington Post doesn’t have any coverage of this, which is unfortunate. WTOP carried coverage that included the stated reason for the problem:
Inova noted that Virginia health officials have made changes that mean doses will now be sent directly to health districts. That, they said, “severely diminished” Inova’s allocation of vaccine.
WJLA had a similar story. Each of the stories quoted Tina Williams, president of the Fairfax County Federation of Teachers, which does not represent all teachers and/or staff. The FCFT responded to the vaccine news with a tweet urging FCPS to push back the return-to-school schedule, in part because “Covid_19 continues to surge in our community.” It’s actually dropping. (Another visualization here.)
Fox5 dug a little deeper and detailed the conflict between parents and FCPS.
