Danbury Mayor: 'We Have No Control Over Vaccine Distribution'

Joe Cavo with permission

We spoke to Joe Cavo on the Ethan and Lou Show Thursday (2/4/21) and asked the Mayor of Danbury about the COVID-19 vaccine roll-out. The vaccination process has been widely criticized as being slow and we asked Cavo who makes the determinations on how many doses we get and when. t\This is how he responded:

"We have no control over vaccine distribution here in CT. We receive our doses from State Government, the Department of Health who receives their doses from the Federal Government Department of Health and we have no say in how many doses we get, when we get them, but we are happy to get them.

And, we have been getting a fairly steady stream. Could we use more? Absolutely, because the need for people is there. The 75+ group and group 1A with first responders, EMS and fire personnel. We've done a great job here in the City of Danbury getting them vaccinated, between the city and the hospital here in Danbury.

Now it's just starting to pop up in other community health organizations that are starting to administer the dose. We've given 12,000-13,000 doses of vaccine out so far in Danbury.

The frustrating part is, people think that we have control over it, it's only Danbury residents, so only Danbury residents should be able to get it.

Well, it's not. The Government hasn't set it up that way. We have to inoculate really anyone who applies to us to come and they get a slot for a vaccine. So people are thinking that we are slow in rolling this out, but it's not that we're slow, it's that we have a limited number of doses that come to us every week.

And we are administering every one of those doses every week and our Health Department has done a great job catching people and if there is an open dose bottle, they will call people and there are people on lists.

We've been doing that through our outreach programs for the 75+ group because a lot of times they have trouble with communication. They have a lot of problems with internet, they have a lot of problems with shared e-mails and sometimes they just can't figure out how to sign up through the system.

So the Mayor's office, the Health Department, our senior center has been reaching out to all of those folks and helping them get signed up for the program.

We give out a lot of doses every week, we could use more. We are hoping that as this rolls out, because I don't know if you remember in the beginning when we were testing, you know people were complaining about the long lines of testing back in the March, April, May time period.

It's slow to spool up, but it does spool up and it gets there and eventually we'll get everybody vaccinated. It will happen, but people just have to be patient."

Since this was the first I was hearing that people from outside Danbury could be vaccinated in the Hat City, I backed up and asked the Mayor to confirm that's what he said. This was his reply:

"They can come from anywhere, they can come from New Britain, they can come from Waterbury, they can come from Shelton, Derby, if they get into the VAMS program (Vaccine Administration Management System) and they sign up and they get the Danbury site as their location to be inoculated, they come her and get inoculated."

Listen to the Ethan and Lou Morning Show every Thursday at 8:15 to hear what Danbury Mayor Joe Cavo has to say about all that is happening in the Hat City.

Audio of interview below