COVID In Denver: Focus Is Getting Vaccine Into Neighborhoods, Underserved Communities

DENVER (CBS4)- Denver Mayor Michael Hancock has joined other mayors from around the country in asking President-elect Joe Biden for more local control over access and distribution of the COVID-19 vaccine. The letter from the mayors comes as Biden is announcing a multi-billion-dollar plan to directly combat the virus and to help cities.

The objective is to get as many people vaccinated as quickly as possible. To do that, in places like the Los Angeles area, they have turned to mass vaccination centers with hundreds lining up to get inoculated.

But that is not the direction the City of Denver is taking. Hancock spoke at a virtual news conference on Thursday, "There are a couple of institutions that are planning mass vaccination sites. They are not Denver-run sites."

Instead, the city is focusing on getting the vaccine to people in neighborhoods who can't make it to big, centralized locations.

"We would look at smaller vaccination sites in areas that are food deserts or areas that may have lack of access to facilities or systems to access the vaccine," said Hancock.

The mayor says they will make strong efforts to get the homeless vaccinated, people of color and others in need. Mass vaccination sites may be set up by private health care providers.

"For our underserved community, they still have to get there, they still have to be able to register and there are some real barriers there for people to be able to do that," said executive director of the Denver Department of Public Health Bob McDonald.

Colorado's Joint Information Center released this statement to CBS4:

The state is supporting a mass clinic coordinated by UCHealth scheduled for the end of January. The mass clinic is expected to run two days and offer 5,000 doses per day. Individuals must have an appointment and need to sign up on the UCHealth webpage by creating a My Health Connection account at https://mychart.uchealth.org/mhcweb/register.aspx.  For specifics, we recommend reaching out to UCHealth.