El Paso County Commissioner Longinos Gonzalez has taken the fight for COVID-19 vaccines to the Colorado Attorney General’s Office, he announced Tuesday, five weeks after local officials first raised concerns over the disproportionate number of vaccines the county was receiving.

Gonzalez said he submitted a complaint Tuesday morning to Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser requesting he investigate why El Paso County continues to receive far fewer COVID-19 vaccine doses than Denver when both counties represent a similar percentage of the state’s population. About 12.5% of Coloradans live in El Paso County, compared to 12.7% who live in Denver County.

Data from the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment on Tuesday show El Paso County has received 185,770 doses while Denver received 284,130. The disparity has grown from a difference of 75,000 doses as of March 2 to more than 98,000 doses as of Tuesday.

Gonzalez said he took the complaint to Weiser’s office because the county has received “no response or assurance” from the state health department that it would correct the smaller number of vaccine doses given to El Paso County. Last week, Gonzalez asked the state to investigate the cause of the disparity and fire those responsible if necessary.

“What are we supposed to do … if no one at the state is willing to take responsibility for the shorting, and, more importantly, unwilling to correct it?” Gonzalez said.

Lawrence Pacheco, spokesman for the Attorney General’s office, said it had not received Gonzalez’s complaint and declined to comment.

Congressman Doug Lamborn on Tuesday joined county officials in calling on Polis to investigate.

“It is deeply concerning that El Paso County is not receiving its fair share of vaccines,” Lamborn said in a written statement. “Gov. Polis needs to address this issue and clarify how this mistake was allowed to occur in the first place. The citizens of El Paso County deserve to be vaccinated at the same rate as those in the Denver metro area. This issue must be corrected immediately.”

El Paso County would have been given nearly 28,000 additional doses if Colorado’s total number of vaccines had been distributed equally based on county population, a Gazette analysis of state data shows. El Paso County is third overall for the total number of doses received, trailing Denver and Adams counties, according to state data.

State officials announced last week Colorado was changing its distribution formula to incorporate the average weekly number of vaccinations by providers and public health agencies and the size of planned community vaccination sites in counties, among other factors.

Representatives from the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment said El Paso County has 99.7% of its proportional share of vaccines, including 34,000 doses distributed directly to veterans and members of the military through the federal government.

“The difference in allocations earlier in the response is attributable to the initial distribution of vaccines in Phase 1A (of the state’s phased vaccine roll-out) that was focused on hospital systems vaccinating critical health care workers,” state health department representatives said in an email. El Paso County has 2,100 fewer hospital workers compared to Denver County, they said, citing data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor.

El Paso County has seen a steady increase in vaccine dose and volume in recent weeks and continues receiving vaccine shipments, Public Health spokeswoman Michelle Hewitt said. Last week, the county received an additional 3,700 Johnson & Johnson one-dose vaccines, along with 3,000 Moderna doses that were distributed to providers across the county.

The county hit a record for vaccine administration Saturday with 6,526 doses administered in a single day, Hewitt said. El Paso County Public Health data show health providers have administered an average of 3,693 doses a day over the past seven days. A total of 163,658 vaccines have been administered in El Paso County and 8.1% of the population is completed vaccinated.

The state also sent a team of five staff members to assist with a vaccination clinic held at the county health department’s newest location in Fountain over the weekend, assisting with vaccinations and observing vaccine recipients after inoculation to monitor for any adverse reactions, she said. The state will also send a team of eight vaccinators to a clinic March 19 and 20.

Additionally, the state has outlined a plan for “geographically distributed mass vaccination sites” across Colorado with the intent to have one of the sites in El Paso County, Hewitt said.

“We are closely coordinating with the state as these plans continue to develop,” she said.

The Gazette’s Evan Wyloge contributed to this report.