By QUINTON SMITH/YachatsNews.com
TIDEWATER — Shelby Johnson fit perfectly the type of person the Lincoln County Public Health staff was looking for Thursday to get a COVID-19 shot – young, busy, lives in the Tidewater area.
Although Lincoln County has one of the highest vaccination rates in Oregon at more than 70 percent, it is lagging in the 18-49 age group and in more rural places like Tidewater, where just 42 percent of the population has been vaccinated.
“I’ve been meaning to get it … but I’ve been just so busy at work,” said Johnson, who works at the Adobe restaurant and motel in Yachats and lives just down Highway 34 from Don Lindly Park in Tidewater.
A clinic coming to her neighborhood, plus the ability to choose between three approved vaccines – Moderna, Pfizer or Johnson & Johnson – is what sealed the deal for Johnson.
“It was just so convenient and I needed to get it done,” she said.
And that’s what brought county health nurses, representatives of the Oregon Health Authority, and paramedics from AMR Ambulance of Portland to the county park along the Alsea River on a beautiful, sunshine-filled day.
Long gone are the mass clinics where nurses vaccinated hundreds of people a day. Now – and through the summer – it’s small clinics in targeted areas where just 10-30 shots may be given. A one-day clinic at the Lincoln County Fair vaccinated 45 people. Another 21 were vaccinated Saturday at the Beachcomber Days celebration in Waldport.
The county mailed postcards advertising the clinic to everyone in the Tidewater zip code. By 6 p.m. Thursday the Tidewater clinic had vaccinated 20 people. Vaccinators will be back July 29 to administer second doses or one-shot Johnson & Johnson vaccine.
Each week the reason to keep clinics going becomes more evident.
In the first week of July there were 10 new COVID-19 cases in Lincoln County – a small number by historical standards. But each case, including one hospitalization, involved people not vaccinated, said Susan Trachsel, LCPH spokeswoman.
“… the data is clear about who is getting sick,” Trachsel said. “This is the slow time, but at this point Public Health believes every vaccination is a ‘win’.”
Crystal Mathis of Yachats has been tracking clinics on her telephone and brought her two daughters, Haley Mathis, 15, and Mackinze Chenalt, 12, to get their first dose of the Pfizer vaccine. Mathis read up on the vaccines and talked about it with her daughters.
“It was their choice. It was up to them,” she said. “But we had Covid in the house at one time and it wasn’t fun.”
Mathis, who last week also lost an uncle in the Midwest to the virus, also has a 9-year-old in the family.
“We told them it was one way to protect her,” Mathis said.
