RENO, Nev. (AP) - City officials in Reno have criticized the Municipal Court staff after learning they may have secured vaccinations for some city personnel and their families ahead of plans outlined by Democratic Gov. Steve Sisolak and the Washoe County Health District.
“To those of you who were vaccinated, let me say this: I do not begrudge any employee who, when offered with the opportunity by a member of our leadership at the City, takes the vaccine,” Reno City Manager Doug Thornley said. “However, this special treatment - based not on sound policy but instead personal relationships - is inappropriate.”
Nevada on Saturday reported a daily record high of 63 COVID-19 deaths along with 2,040 additional confirmed cases amid a coronavirus surge.
Thornley said he learned on Wednesday that court judges and staff, including lawyers, technical support, interpreters and drug testers, took advantage of an opportunity to receive the COVID-19 vaccines last week, KRNV-TV reported.
The Reno Gazette-Journal obtained emails that showed Judge Dorothy Nash Holmes and another judge helped arrange the vaccinations on Jan. 9 through a clinic intended for older residents.
“We have been offered a unique and special opportunity by a local doctor to get all of our ‘legal system’ vaccinated this Saturday here in Reno,” the judges wrote in an email sent to court staff on Jan. 6. “This doctor is getting many doses of Moderna 2-dose vaccine that local law enforcement isn’t using and he can give us a couple of hours.”
Holmes said she was “furious” about Thornley’s response, saying he was trying to take a “really good thing and turn it into a bad thing.”
Holmes told the Gazette-Journal that her husband is friends with Dr. Andy Pasternak and he volunteered to help with the vaccination clinic for older adults where he mentioned to Pasternak that court employees need to be inoculated.
Court employees were not explicitly included in the first two versions of the governor’s vaccine plan. Neither were other essential workers such as teachers, law enforcement and public health employees.
Holmes argued the governor “left out an entire branch of government” and that court personnel were at risk because they were in and out of the building despite it being closed to the public since March.
The Nevada Supreme Court has been working with Sisolak’s office to ensure court personnel were in the latest version of the vaccination plan. The new plan was announced Monday - two days after Reno Municipal Court staff got their shots.
Holmes said she was aware plans were in the making to get the judiciary vaccinated but said she didn’t want to wait for new regulations to come out.
Nevada’s COVID-19 Response Director Caleb Cage said judicial employees were always included in the initial plans under “critical infrastructure” workers in the second phase but a lack of definitions, now added, caused confusion.
Pasternak said he was frustrated by the response to his decision to vaccinate court personnel, but acknowledged he should have confirmed with the state where judges ranked in the playbook.
“There’s just a lot of confusion,” he said, calling his misinterpretation of the plan a mistake. “We were just trying to get as many shots in as many arms as we could and it’s what I’m going to continue to try to do.”
In addition to his criticism, Thornley said the city is “evaluating every avenue of accountability to ensure that this doesn’t happen again.”
The additional cases and deaths reported Saturday increased the state’s pandemic totals to 260,090 cases and 3,761 deaths, according to Department of Health and Human Services data.
Nevada’s previous high number of deaths reported on a single day was 62 on Thursday.
The 311 deaths reported in the week since Jan. 10 were a pandemic one-week high for Nevada, surpassing the 299 deaths reported the previous week, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported.
Nevada’s seven-day rolling average of daily new cases rose over the past two weeks, increasing from 1,854.6 new cases per day on Jan. 1 to 2,055.6 new cases on Friday, while the rolling average of daily deaths increased from 29 on Jan. 1 to 43.4 on Friday, according to data from Johns Hopkins University and The COVID Tracking Project.
The number of infections is thought to be far higher because many people have not been tested, and studies suggest people can be infected with the virus without feeling sick.
Of the additional deaths reported Saturday, 57 were in Clark County. Of the additional cases, 1,608 were in Clark County.
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