LAS VEGAS (AP) — Governor Steve Sisolak rolled up his left sleeve and got a coronavirus vaccination Thursday along with grocery workers at a Las Vegas-area supermarket.
“As we get vaccinations we will be able to open up,” said Sisolak, promoting efforts to vaccinate Nevada residents so the state’s key tourism industry can again begin enticing crowds to town.
Sisolak is 67 and was diagnosed with COVID-19 in November. He has been eligible to receive a COVID-19 vaccine with others in his age group.
He received a one-shot Johnson & Johnson vaccine, followed by others including Albertson’s employee Roman Avalos, during a news event with leaders of the local United Food and Commercial Workers union.
“It makes it safer for them, for their families and all the guests we’re bringing in, all the conventioneers,” the governor told reporters. “We want to make it as safe as possible.”
Sisolak received his shot shortly after workers in the key Las Vegas restaurant, hospitality and casino industry were told they can begin getting vaccinated and on the day a newspaper reported that a rural Nevada county has yet to receive any doses of COVID-19 vaccine.
Esmeralda County sheriff’s Sgt. Matthew Kirkland told the Las Vegas Review-Journal that residents are getting vaccinated in neighboring counties, but there are no local inoculation sites. The nearest is in the Nye County town of Tonopah, about a 30-minute drive from the Esmeralda County seat of Goldfield.
Esmeralda County has fewer than 1,000 residents and no hospitals, supermarkets or incorporated communities. Kirkland said military veterans can get inoculated at Veterans Affairs clinics in Las Vegas, almost a three-hour drive south of Goldfield, or in Reno, a four-hour drive north.
State health officials list one other county reporting no doses administered: Storey County, where the Carson City Health and Human Services agency has held vaccination clinics.
Two rural Nevada counties — Esmeralda and Eureka — have recorded no deaths from the coronavirus, according to state data.