Essex County is preparing to close some of its COVID-19 vaccination sites as demand for the shot wanes.

The county has had five sites set up since December.

“As of April 29, we were doing 28,000 doses. Now, as of Monday, May 3, we are only doing 4,000 and that’s for all five sites,” says Essex County Executive Joe DiVincenzo. “It’s dropped dramatically.”

DiVincenzo says that the drop in demand is a good thing. Those who want to get the shot are getting it. But he says now is the time to shift the county’s resources.

“We’ve been doing mobile vaccinations in the city and for the vulnerable. And as we close facilities, we will expand on that because that’s where we have to increase the numbers of people that need to be vaccinated,” he says.

The focus will now turn to hard-to-reach communities and urban areas where cases of the virus have been high, but vaccination rates remain low. If the sites are needed again, they can reopen. But DiVincenzo says that he hopes that this is a step forward.

“We can’t go back to what we had before in the past – highest number of cases, highest number of deaths,” he says.

The locations that are closing are the sites at West Caldwell Tech, Donald Payne High School and Sears at Livingston Mall.

The sites at the Kmart in West Orange and Essex County College in Newark will now accept walk-ins. Many other sites statewide are doing the same.