Colorado will stop offering vaccines at community sites beginning March 31, the state announced Tuesday morning, and will instead fold COVID-19 inoculations into the broader health system.

The transition will be “phased,” the state Department of Public Health and Environment said in a news release, and mobile buses and other equity-specific efforts will continue. The move is the latest step by the state to unwind its role in managing and addressing COVID-19, a transition accelerated by a significant decline in cases and hospitalizations in recent weeks.

The drive-thru and community vaccination sites have been a mainstay of Colorado’s COVID-19 response since inoculations became widely available a year ago. Those sites inoculated thousands of Coloradans each day, turning parking lots at sports arenas and event centers into clinics.

As 2021 progressed, the importance of the large-scale sites dipped somewhat as the pandemic continued and the bulk of the ready-and-waiting population received their vaccines. In some ways, the state had begun to transition away from this model late last summer: With much of the motivated population inoculated, officials turned increasingly to primary care offices to vaccinate the hesitant. 

Under Gov. Jared Polis’ “Roadmap to Moving Forward,” unveiled late last month, a pillar of the state’s move away from its COVID-19 response is “normalizing COVID patient care in traditional medical settings.” That includes not only moving vaccinations into clinics, pharmacies and doctors’ offices but also transitioning the delivery of COVID-19 treatments into those settings, as well.

“It’s not normal to get tested in a parking lot,” Scott Bookman, the state’s COVID-19 incident commander, told The Denver Gazette last month. “It’s not normal to receive therapeutics in a bus. It’s not normal to get your vaccine in a drive-thru site. And so we need to start thinking about how we evolve this back to our normal health care system while continuing to make sure that we have a robust public health infrastructure to (ramp) up a response again.”

In its statement, the health department said it was “prepared to reestablish” its community sites “within a four-to-five week timeline,” if necessary. With COVID-19 cases in full retreat across the state, and with case and hospitalization levels at their lowest points since mid-2020, officials here have advanced plans to move the response to the disease away from a centralized, state-driven model and toward a more traditional approach, driven by hospitals, clinics and the standing health care system.

Colorado’s mobile vaccine clinics will continue through at least the end of June to help the vaccine get to “hard to reach communities.” Other equity-focused efforts, like pop-up clinics and a “forthcoming equity-focused grant program,” will continue. 

As of Tuesday morning, 73.11% of Coloradans 5 years of age and older have been fully inoculated. More than 81% have received at least one dose.