Sun City Summerlin opening vaccine pop-up site

A COVID-19 vaccination site opened in Sun City Summerlin on Tuesday, offering 2,100 shots to the senior community’s oldest homeowners and residents.

The clinic will last through Thursday and is being held in collaboration with the city of Las Vegas and the Southern Nevada Health District.

There are no available appointments for the public at large to sign up for at this time, Las Vegas city spokesman Jace Radke said. The community’s homeowners association has been collecting pre-registrations since early January and is in charge of scheduling appointments.

“We want to make it as easy as possible for everyone who wants to get vaccinated to be vaccinated,” Radke said. “For some people that might mean having a site closer to their neighborhood, because they’re not mobile.”

The site is among the first “pop-up” immunization clinics that local governments are using to target specific communities.

Clark County last week offered 250 doses to members of the Parkdale Recreation and Senior Center in east Las Vegas. The county also held a seperate vaccination clinic at nearby Jerome Mack Middle School on the same day with 400 doses to elders from the community at large. The sites were chosen due to their location in a historically underserved working-class area and its heavily Hispanic population, a group that has been hit particularly hard by the virus.

Las Vegas is also offering 450 doses at the Doolittle Senior Center this week. The site is located in West Las Vegas, a historically black community, but registration was open to any Las Vegas Valley residents aged 70 and older. The city announced Monday some additional appointments are available at this location.

The Sun City Summerlin site appears to be Southern Nevada’s largest pop-up announced so far.

The community comprises most of the 89134 ZIP code, which has the largest concentration of residents aged 70 and older in the Las Vegas Valley. Census data shows more than one-third of residents there fall into the category.

However, less than 1,400 of the more than 24,000 people estimated to be living in the mostly white ZIP code had tested positive for COVID-19 throughout the pandemic, according to the Southern Nevada Health District. That equated to one of the lowest infection rates of any local ZIP code.

The health district does not publish hospitalization or death data by ZIP code.

“By establishing smaller neighborhood sites in areas with large senior populations to compliment larger countywide sites, the hope is that more individuals can quickly and conveniently be vaccinated,” Radke wrote in an email, adding that more pop-up sites would be announced as more vaccine doses became available.

Close to 7,000 people had registered for a vaccine at the site as of Jan. 21, homeowner’s association executive director Mitzi Mills wrote in an email to residents.

Because only 2,100 doses will be available this week, only homeowners and residents aged 78 and older will be vaccinated, according to an email Mills sent the community Friday.

“As we receive more vaccine, we will add more days and issue more appointments,” she wrote.

Radke said Friday he could not confirm the city would hold another pop-up site in Sun City Summerlin, but it was likely based on the area’s demand.

Contact Michael Scott Davidson at sdavidson@reviewjournal.com or 702-477-3861. Follow @davidsonlvrj on Twitter.