By QUINTON SMITH/YachatsNews.com
Just as Gov. Kate Brown is promising to end most coronavirus restrictions this month if 70 percent of Oregonians are vaccinated, Lincoln County health providers are also pushing to get the county past the same threshold.
In Lincoln County, 67.5 percent of residents over the age of 18 have received one or two doses of the Moderna, Pfizer or Johnson & Johnson vaccine, according to the latest figures from the Oregon Health Authority.
The county was one of the first in Oregon to return to the “low risk” category for business and social restrictions when it reached 65 percent May 21. But in the three weeks since, the pace of vaccinations slowed considerably.
The county has vaccinated 29,216 of 43,259 residents age 16 and over. When vaccines became widely available and the first mass clinics opened, there were more than 700 people a day getting vaccinated from early March to early May, including a high of 1,221 on April 2. Now, with so many done, the seven-day average is 165 doses a day – and just 102 last Saturday.
“We saw a peak when (children) age 12 became eligible,” said Susan Trachsel, spokeswoman for Lincoln County Public Health. “But it’s definitely dropped off.”
This week the Lincoln County Health Department and the Lincoln County School District are administering second doses to students at its four high schools who received vaccinations four weeks ago.
But the big clinics are gone or going.
The LCPH clinic at the county fairgrounds shut down May 27. This is the last week for vaccinations at the Taft station of North Lincoln Fire & Rescue and at Samaritan Health System’s hospital in Lincoln City. The weekend clinic at Samaritan Pacific Communities Hospital in Newport ends June 19.
Beginning Monday, Samaritan will transition to offering Pfizer or Moderna vaccines at its walk-in medical clinics in Newport and Lincoln City or at any medical office affiliated with Samaritan.
Focus now on ‘pop up’ clinics, workplaces
Now the county and its medical partners are focusing on organizing smaller clinics at workplaces, apartment complexes, libraries, summer programs, offices for low-income programs – anyplace were people congregate.
“Our first transition was to go away from the mass clinics,” said Trachsel. “We’re now just hitting our stride on the mini-clinics.”
One such clinic was Friday at La Juquilita Mexican grocery in Newport aimed at the Hispanic community, which has lagged other groups in getting vaccinated. One of seven clinics organized so far by the Olalla Center, it offered $25 grocery vouchers, music and interpreters to help attract people – and vaccinated 57 people.
“We absolutely consider that a success,” said Kendall Cable, outreach coordinator for Olalla’s community health programs. “It may seem like a small number to some, but it’s a lot of lives. We’re continuing to search for these pockets of people.”
The Olalla Center will also work with the county at a clinic during Fiesta Latina July 2 at the Lincoln County Fair.
On Tuesday, Pacific West Ambulance, which serves most of Lincoln County, announced it would go to anyone’s home or work in the county on Wednesday to deliver a dose of the Moderna vaccine.
But it hasn’t always gone smoothly or easily.
A recent clinic in Depoe Bay that community leaders pushed for drew just 16 people. The vaccination rate in the Depoe Bay 97341 Zip code is just below 62 percent.
And, despite outreach to businesses around the county, few have signed up to sponsor a clinic, Trachsel said.
“People are not really volunteering their businesses,” she said. “We just need businesses who want us to go there.”
There will be clinics June 14 and June 17 at the big George-Pacific paper mill in Toledo for employees and their families, including a catered barbeque. The Toledo Library is sponsoring a clinic June 23.
That area has become a target because the percentage of vaccinated residents in the Toledo/Elk City ZIP code is just 41.6 percent.
On Friday and Saturday, county and state personnel will hold nine-hour clinics at the Yaquina Bay Yachat Club on the east end of Newport’s bayfront in an effort to reach fishermen, seafood plant workers and anyone else in that area. The clinic will offer the two-dose Pfizer or the one-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccines – and the enticement of $15 vouchers to a food truck that will be there.
“It was a matter of trying to get maximum benefit in the beginning … and now we have to find these smaller communities,” said Trachsel.
Health planners are also using Zip code data from the state to help target some clinics. Where the 97498 Zip code in Yachats has a 77.5 percent vaccination rate, according to the OHA, the 97368 Zip code in Otis shows a 43 percent rate. So Trachsel said the county hopes to offer clinics there soon.
The health department is also is trying to focus on the 20-49 age group, where the county lags the statewide vaccination rate. Trachsel said that is the prime working age in the county and health officials believe that many are leery of potential side effects and missing work.
Health officials are also considering a door-to-door vaccination campaign in targeted neighborhoods that has been repeatedly pushed by county Commissioner Kaety Jacobson. The idea is gaining traction – the question is how it actually works — and is endorsed by Hispanic leaders in the community, Trachsel said.
“The door-to-door request is still on the table,” she said.
The big question is when it all might just fade away, with vaccinations becoming more routinely handled exclusively in doctors’ offices, public health clinics and pharmacies. Especially as the state’s 70 percent threshold is on the horizon.
“We’re not stopping,” Trachsel said. “We’re not going to stop until there’s literally no demand. We still have people to vaccinate. We just don’t know what it’s going to look like come July and August.”
The statewide situation
As of Tuesday, 67.1 percent of eligible Oregonians over the age of 18 had received at least one vaccine dose. The OHA says 97,168 more people need to be vaccinated to reach the state’s 70 percent target.
Brown has said when 70 percent of all eligible state residents have at least one shot of vaccine, she’ll lift nearly all restrictions on businesses, schools, events and restaurants. Because the same mask and social distancing rules will apply to vaccinated and unvaccinated people, employers and businesses no longer will have to verify people’s vaccination status to allow them to go maskless.
The OHA has set up a special dashboard to let people know how close the state is to reaching the target.
Like many states, Oregon is offering prizes for those inoculated. One person will receive $1 million, while one person in each of the 36 counties will get $10,000. The state is also offering five $100,000 Oregon College Savings Plan scholarships to vaccinated youths. The drawing will take place on June 28, with winners announced the following week. Anyone in the state’s vaccination registration system by midnight on June 27 is eligible.
Oregon health providers are administering an average of 20,000 COVID-19 doses per day over the past week. If that rate continues, restrictions could be lifted by the end of the week – but that might be an optimistic target as daily vaccinations fluctuate and decline.
On Monday, Oregon’s workplace safety agency said it will lift face covering and distancing rules for businesses and other institutions when 70 percent of Oregon adults are at least partially vaccinated.
That means most employees in public workplaces, such as stores, and private ones, like offices or factories, could take off their masks and work in close quarters — assuming employers don’t maintain their own mask or distancing rules.
The announcement aligns the Oregon’s Occupational Safety and Health Division with the governor’s announcement that she would lift all occupancy limits and masking requirements, for both the vaccinated and unvaccinated, in most public places once the state hits the 70 percent threshold.
State health officials are recommending that unvaccinated residents continue to wear masks and distance. Infection and death rates remain high among unvaccinated people.
For example, at St. Charles Hospital in Bend, only 18 of the 346 COVID-19 patients hospitalized since March 1 were vaccinated, doctors there reported. Of the 98 deaths in the hospital system, only one was vaccinated.
In King County, Wash., epidemiologists there said 97 percent of new cases there in April and May occurred in people not vaccinated.
Total Covid-19 cases during 2020-21 and vaccinations of a sampling of Lincoln County Zip codes as of Tuesday:
Yachats 97498: 22 COVID-19 cases; 1,297 of 1,673 residents vaccinated; 77.5 percent
Waldport 97394: 71 COVID-19 cases; 3,108 of 5,224 residents vaccinated; 59.5 percent
Tidewater 97390: 11 cases; 311 of 750 vaccinated; 41.5 percent
Seal Rock 97376: 11 cases; 826 of 1,254 vaccinated; 65.9 percent
South Beach 97376: 19 cases; 1,098 of 1,772 vaccinated; 62 percent
Newport 97365: 507 cases; 6,002 of 11,348 vaccinated; 51.7 percent
Lincoln City 97367: 344 cases; 6,261 of 9,746 vaccinated; 64.2 percent
To see all Zip code data in Lincoln County and Oregon go to an OHA website here.