By QUINTON SMITH/YachatsNews.com
After racing ahead to get a majority of Lincoln County residents vaccinated, the state Wednesday gave the county’s health care providers permission to immediately begin offering COVID-19 vaccines to thousands of front-line workers, five days earlier than scheduled.
Lincoln County Public Health sought permission to jump ahead on the schedule Tuesday after hundreds of appointments remained open in a half-dozen clinics this week.
The newly eligible residents are in the state’s so-called Group 7 which includes frontline workers – no matter what age — such as grocery store clerks, restaurant workers, and people working regularly with the public, people of multi-generational households, people living with or caring for a relative who is not their child, and any adult over 16 with an underlying health condition. Lincoln County Public Health estimates the number of people in Group 7 in the county who have not already been vaccinated to be about 13,000.
The newly eligible group is large and is expected to quickly fill remaining appointments at clinics this week and next. The county sent emails to employers Wednesday letting them know that many of their workers are now eligible for vaccines.
“We are way ahead,” said Susan Trachsel, spokeswoman for LCPH. “But we know with Group 7 we will get a lot of demand.”
Lincoln County has vaccinated a greater percentage of residents than all but one other county in Oregon. As of Wednesday, health care providers – everyone from the county to Samaritan Health Services, to the Siletz tribe to pharmacies — have given at least one shot to more than 18,500 people with hundreds more getting vaccinated Thursday, Friday and Saturday. That’s almost 50 percent of the county’s population of 40,700 over the age of 16 eligible to get vaccinated.
Lincoln County was one of 20 counties given approval to move ahead on the list. The others were Benton, Coos, Crook, Deschutes, Douglas, Grant, Harney, Jefferson, Josephine, Klamath, Lake, Lane, Malheur, Marion, Morrow, Sherman, Umatilla, Union and Wheeler.
“Moving up vaccination in these counties will enable us to vaccinate our frontline workers more quickly while enabling counties with adequate supply to fully utilize their allotment of COVOD-19 vaccine,” said Oregon Health Authority director Patrick Allen.
The OHA says a frontline worker is someone who has a job that puts them at higher risk for contracting COVID-19 because of:
- Regular close contact with others outside of their household (less than 6 feet); and
- Routine – more than 15 minutes per person(s) – close contact with others outside of their household; and
- They cannot perform their job duties from home or another setting that limits the close or routine contact with others outside of their household.
Lincoln County and its partners are hosting seven clinics this week with more than 2,700 first doses available. Another 1,100 second doses are being given at two other clinics.
While it holds big first- and second-dose clinics at the county fairgrounds in Newport and the Taft station of North Lincoln Fire and Rescue, it is also organizing clinics Friday and Saturday on the Newport bayfront to vaccinate up to 500 seafood workers and others in the fishing industry. LCPH will be using the one-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine for those two clinics.
An outbreak among seafood workers last June was the largest workplace outbreak in Oregon for much of 2020.
North Lincoln Fire is also hosting a clinic Saturday at its station in Otis for people displaced by the wildfires that swept through that community last September.
And, to reach more working people, this week the clinic in Waldport has been moved to noon to 7 p.m. Saturday. Plans are to alternate the clinic each week between Thursdays and Saturdays. As of Wednesday afternoon, there were 47 openings at the Waldport clinic Saturday evening, which has 250 doses available.
Three organizations, the Olalla Center, Acompanar, and First Baptist Church of Newport have organized a clinic this week for Latino and Indigenous residents using the Pfizer vaccine provided by RiteAid.
The Confederated Tribes of the Siletz, which gets about 300 doses a week, has also opened its clinic in Siletz to all ages of the general public.
Five retail pharmacies in Lincoln County – BiMart, Safeway, Hi-School, Walmart and Fred Meyer – are also offering shots through their company websites. This week, the county gave 150 of its Moderna doses to Fred Meyer and 200 to the BiMart store in Lincoln City.
Direct access to clinic appointments
County public health officials also announced Tuesday that they are changing its vaccination signup proceeds to allow the public direct access to all clinic appointments to see what openings there might be. Once people see a clinic they are eligible for, they still have to register through the regular signup process that has been used since vaccinations started.
But, the county is doing away with its waiting list and email notification of clinics starting Monday. People can regularly check the health department’s vaccine website for clinic openings and/or sign up through the statewide “Get Vaccinated Oregon” web portal. The state’s notification system allows people to sign up for notifications for any new clinics in the state that are open to them.
The state’s system will also be used for all of the public clinics held by Lincoln County Public Health, North Lincoln Fire Department, PacWest Ambulance in Waldport and Samaritan Health Services.
Scheduling appointments will still be done as before – either by clicking on the provided link or contacting a call center. For Samaritan Health clinics the call center number is 855-441-2311; the Lincoln County call center is 541-265-0621.
Go to the Lincoln County Public Health department’s vaccine clinic website
Go to the Oregon Health’s Authority’s Get Vaccinated Oregon website