U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Xavier Becerra is interviewed following a briefing from officials at the Clark County Fire Department Training Facility Thursday, July 22, 2021.
Thursday, July 22, 2021 | 4 p.m.
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra visited Las Vegas today to check in on the federal “surge team” deployed to Nevada to help stem the still-building COVID-19 surge.
As many local government and public health officials have been doing recently, he also advocated the COVID-19 vaccine as the best way out of the pandemic.
“We’re going to go where you are to make sure if you haven’t been vaccinated and you'd like to be, we’ll make it happen, because this is real,” Becerra said at a briefing at a Clark County fire station on Tropicana Avenue and Arville Street. “This is not fiction. This is not some kind of disinformation campaign. This is just a fact. If you are dying today in America from COVID, it’s because, essentially, you're not vaccinated.”
The Federal Emergency Management Agency dispatched a crew to Southern Nevada earlier this month as COVID-19 cases rose, the delta variant became predominant and vaccinations went stagnant. Part of the strategy is sending people into neighborhoods to promote the vaccine by going door to door with informational brochures and tips on where to find the closest clinics.
Not everyone will respond favorably to the educational outreach. Others will.
“There's still people that think that the Earth is flat and we didn't land on the moon as well. There's some people that we cannot convince,” Gov. Steve Siolak said. “But I can tell you what, the more people we vaccinate, the safer we make our community.”
Sisolak reached out to the federal government earlier this month for help from a surge team. The team will be in Las Vegas for two months.
In the time since the state sought federal assistance, COVID-19 testing positivity rates have more than doubled in Nevada to 12.7%, large local governments, including Los Angeles County, Chicago and Hawaii, have suggested visitors rethink trips to Las Vegas, and the Clark County Commission reinstated a partial mask mandate, specifically for workers in large, indoor public-facing businesses.
The state has also started doling out raffle prizes through the “Vax Nevada Days” promotion. Sisolak credited an increase in first doses to the promotion, which he announced in June.
Last week, about 840 per 100,000 people got their first dose, compared to the national average of 580 per 100,000, he said.
Sisolak said tourists are also welcome to get vaccinated in Las Vegas, as many did at a clinic at the Park MGM on the Strip last weekend. Another Strip clinic is planned for Saturday at the Linq.
Becerra said variants will keep developing and may be more dangerous than even the more-transmissible delta variant, if people don’t step up vaccination.
And currently, almost every COVID-19-related death nationwide is in an unvaccinated patient.
“You can’t combat disinformation easily, but I have heard no one who wishes to peddle disinformation respond effectively to the fact that more than 99 out of every 100 people who have died is unvaccinated,” he said.
