By QUINTON SMIth/YachantsNews.com
Over the past seven weeks Timothy Hall has seen all the COVID-19 hotspots in Oregon – Malheur County, Grant County, Douglas County – while tooling around with one of the federal government’s “big yellow” vaccine buses.
Now he, a team of 23 medical contractors, and the yellow Federal Emergency Management Agency bus have brought thousands of doses of coronavirus vaccines to Lincoln County for two weeks.
Judging from the lines of people waiting for booster shots Monday in Yachats and Tuesday and Wednesday in Waldport, Lincoln County should be a breeze — despite the rain, wind and lightning storm that forced the cancellation of the clinic’s first day Sunday. The vaccination rate in Lincoln County is more than 80 percent, almost double that of Malheur and Grant counties.
Hall is a former U.S. Army Ranger who was working at Oregon Health Sciences University as a virologist when the Oregon Health Authority asked for help leading one of three teams of FEMA contractors crisscrossing the state in the distinctive buses.
“We’ve been going to all different kinds of places, a lot of them more vaccine resistant,” Hall said Monday as he helped organize the start of a 12-hour day of setting up, giving mostly booster shots and then preparing to move to Waldport for clinics there Tuesday and Wednesday.
Hall said over the two days in Waldport they gave more than 530 shots, the vast majority of them boosters.
They administered 269 doses of the Moderna, Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson vaccines Monday in Yachats. Most were booster shots in a community where more than 88 percent are already fully vaccinated. They also conducted 11 COVID-19 tests, which are shipped to a lab via FedEx and take 3-5 days to get a result.
Staff from all over U.S.
One of the staffers is Marcy Szeliga, an intensive care unit nurse from Fort Meyers, Fla. She has worked as a traveling nurse for the last 12 years, contracting for months at a time with short-staffed hospitals around the country.
“I’ve been everywhere,” she said. But after 18 months of what she called “Covid hell” Szeliga joined the FEMA bus in June and spent the summer helping vaccinate people in New Mexico.
“It can be a little chaotic at first, but I love it,” she said Monday while handing out syringes to vaccinators. “It’s different every day.”
Joey Nicolas has been a nurse for three years, but knows Lincoln County from being stationed in Newport while in the Coast Guard. Now living in Dallas and working in Salem, he decided to travel the state after connecting with Hall through military circles.
“This is pretty fun,” he said Monday. “I get to go to different places and work with different people.”
The challenge comes, he said, when they travel to the low-vaccination areas of Oregon like Douglas County, where they were last week.
“There’s a lot of misinformation, so we talk to people … and it’s a great feeling just to help that one person,” Nicolas said.
No one needed much convincing Monday in Yachats.
The clinic was set up inside the Common’s multipurpose room and there was a line down the hallway and out the door when shots began shortly before 11 a.m. One of the first in line was Kevin Square, who is usually leading an exercise class in the multipurpose room on Monday mornings.
Square, who got his first doses in April, said he got the Moderna booster because he is has a compromised immune system. And while he has no problem with getting vaccinated, there is one issue that bothers him.
“I’m conflicted that we’re getting boosters and much of the rest of the world doesn’t have their first shot yet,” he said.
In county through Nov. 5
The FEMA bus and clinical team will be at the Waldport Community Center from noon to 7 p.m. Tuesday and Wednesday.
The bus and vaccine team move to Toledo for three days starting Thursday. On Sunday they set up outside the Chinook Winds Casino in Lincoln City through Nov. 5.
The FEMA team is also staffing several smaller, mobile clinics in other nearby locations, including Tidewater east of Waldport on Thursday.
The clinics offer free COVID-19 vaccinations to any eligible person, including Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson vaccines.
Third doses and boosters have eligibility requirements, said the Lincoln County Public Health department. Only people who are currently immunocompromised can receive a third dose at least 28 days after the second dose. Pfizer boosters are approved six months after the second dose, but only under certain conditions.
Eligible people also includes those with certain underlying medical conditions or who are at higher risk of exposure to the COVID-19 virus due to where they live or work. In Oregon that includes everyone who was in Phase 1A of the initial vaccine rollout earlier this year. The Lincoln County website provides more details on third dose and booster eligibility. www.co.lincoln.or.us/COVID
In addition to the main clinics, smaller pop-up clinics will also be available:
- Tidewater: 2-6 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 27, Alsea River Boarding Kennels;
- Siletz: 1-5 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 28, Siletz City Hall;
- Otis: 2-6 p.m. Nov. 2: Panther Creek Community Center;
- Otis: 2-6 p.m. Nov. 4: Salmon River Grange;
- Newport: 2-7 p.m. Nov. 5, La Juquilita Mexican grocery
Lincoln County Public Health said Monday there is strong interest in booster shots so it plans to add additional times at its Friday clinics at the county fairgrounds in Newport.
There are also clinics from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday at the Lincoln City Community Center and from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday at the Taft station of North Lincoln Fire & Rescue, which will offer only Modera vaccines.
There is an appointment-only clinic Saturday at Samaritan Health Service’s education center on the hospital campus in Newport.
