By QUINTON SMITH/YachatsNews.com
Vaccines are back.
Following a week when the state diverted all first-dose vaccines from Lincoln County to other area behind schedule, health officials were told Thursday that it would be getting 900 doses of the Moderna vaccine to use next week.
The diversion from Lincoln County and 16 others caused an uproar from local health officials and county commissioners, who sent a letter to the Oregon Health Authority complaining that it was being penalized for being organized.
Next week, Lincoln County Public Health and its partners can get back to putting shots in arms.
The plan, according to LCPH spokeswoman Susan Trachsel, is to inoculate 350 people in the so-called 1A group – health care workers, first responders and educators – who only recently signed up for their vaccinations. They are on a waiting list and will be contacted by the county to come get their shots.
The remaining 600 doses will go to people over 80 years of age who also have already signed up on a county waiting list. The state’s plan is to start that age group across Oregon on Monday.
Clinics to handle the vaccinations are scheduled Tuesday and Friday at the North Lincoln Fire District station in Taft. Another clinic will be Thursday at the county fairgrounds in Newport.
“We’re trying to do this all fairly and get to the people already in line,” Trachsel said Thursday night.
Trachsel also said the county is near agreement to rent space in Waldport and Toledo to set up clinics in those communities. When those open depends on when the agreements are signed, getting everything in place, organizing volunteers – and getting more vaccines.
“It’s all vaccine dependent, but we’re also ramping up our volunteers,” she said.
The health department recently hired two people to help organize clinics and volunteers.
“We really want to do more clinics than just at the fairgrounds,” Trachsel said.
Safeway and Fred Meyer pharmacies in Lincoln County are expected to get limited doses of vaccines next week. News reports have said those would be small allotments of 100 doses per week per store. Signing up for shots at those stores will be through their websites, which are also linked from the LCPH website.
Doses for second-rounds of shots – including two big clinics where more than 700 health care workers and educators are expected this weekend in Newport and Lincoln City – are arriving as scheduled.
According to the OHA, Lincoln County has vaccinated 4,922 people as of Thursday. The county estimates it has 28,000 inoculations to do out of a population of 48,000. Children under 18 cannot get a vaccine and health officials estimate 30 percent of adults will not want one.
Currently the county does not know until the end of each week how many doses it will get for the upcoming week, which makes it very hard to plan and adds to the drama of getting the word out to thousands of people clamoring for vaccinations.
In January the OHA said it would move to a three-week schedule. That did not happen but was promised again this week, Trachsel said, “We’ll see.”
Still, she said, local and state officials believe “by the end of this month the supply will be more stabilized.”
County has been well organized
For the past six weeks, a coalition of Lincoln County health organizations has been ramping up vaccinations of health care workers, cops, firefighters, and finally, educators.
The organization was doing so well that it cleared a waiting list of 655 people last Friday when they got vaccinations at the county fairgrounds.
Lincoln County had done so well that it had cleared most of the first group of qualified people, and on its own decided to combine the 80- and 75-year-old age groups into one and planned to start vaccinating those people this week.
Then it abruptly stopped this week when 500 doses were diverted to the Portland area and 10 other counties.
Lincoln County commissioners and health officials were very angry.
“I’m just really upset about this,” said Commissioner Kaety Jacobson said Monday during the commission’s weekly meeting. “I feel like we’re being punished for doing a good job.”
Jacobson said Lincoln County has lots of essential workers in seafood processing plants, in restaurants frequented by tourists, and a larger percentage of older residents than much of Oregon.
“I don’t feel they’ll do the same for us” when it comes time for Lincoln County to vaccinate those large groups, she said.
Commissioners and organizations from Samaritan, Pacific West Ambulance to the Lincoln County School District signed a one-page letter to OHA Director Patrick Allen objecting to the diversion.
“The fact that we cannot give prime doses to anyone in our community this week because you want the metro areas to ‘catch up’ is a one-size-fits-all approach that will not work,” the letter said, in part.
The letter said the Lincoln County group collaborated well when it started planning vaccination clinics months ago and is more nimble about getting doses into arms.
But, the letter said, the area lacks resources and money to deal with major events, should they occur.
“We had one of the largest outbreaks in the state this summer,” the letter said. “We are constantly exposed to people who travel, many from states that don’t even have a mask policy. We are the least able to respond to these challenges as we are chronically under-staffed and under-funded.”
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For vaccine information in Lincoln County, go here
If you are eligible, go here to sign up for the waiting list and an appointment
