From YachatsNews.com and Oregon Public Broadcasting
Lincoln County Public Health and a Newport-based ambulance service have received their first shipments of the new Moderna COVID-19 vaccine and started administering doses to emergency medical personnel.
Until last week, Oregon’s share of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines were shipped directly to hospitals, tribes, and to a handful of pharmacies which are distributing them to nursing homes.
On Thursday, the Oregon Health Authority began shipping Moderna vaccines to a new group of distributors: emergency medical services and county public health departments, which are making the vaccine available more broadly to health-care workers and first responders.
Pacific West Ambulance in Newport received 400 doses of the vaccine and with help from the Lincoln County Sheriff’s office began vaccinating EMS workers on New Years Eve.
The public health agency got 100 doses Thursday and expects to get 100 doses a week to begin distribution to emergency responders, law enforcement, long-term care staff and residents, tribal health programs, and other health care workers.
Samaritan Health Services expects to finish up the first round of its two doses of the Pfizer vaccine to 400 employees at its hospitals in Newport and Lincoln City this week and start administering second doses Jan. 11.
Lincoln County has set up a group made up of police, hospital, emergency management, ambulance companies and first responders to plan and prioritize vaccine distribution to people in those occupations. The county said as the planners move through the first priority group identified by the Oregon Health Authority, additional community groups will be added to the advisory group.
Once people in the first group are vaccinated, the plan is to move to the second group which includes people working or living in adult foster care homes, assisted living and long-term care facilities, jail employees and inmates, group homes, treatment facilities, and other health care workers.
While Lincoln County Public Health said it anticipates receiving at least 100 doses each week for priority distribution it does not know when the distribution from the Oregon Health Authority will increase.
The county has set up a vaccine monitoring website so the public can know when vaccines arrive and what groups of people are eligible to sign up. The OHA also has a vaccine dashboard with information on Oregon’s COVID-19 vaccine distribution,
Oregon behind vaccine goal
Oregon is well behind the target that public health officials set in early December to get 100,000 people their first dose of a COVID-19 vaccine before the years’ end.
As of Friday, the OHA reported that 44,415 people had received the first dose of a vaccine and that 190,500 doses had been delivered to hospitals, long-term care facilities, EMS agencies, urgent care facilities and county public health agencies.
The Oregon Health Authority attributes the delays to start-up issues, and said vaccine provider sites across the state are inoculating more people per hour. The agency said the supply of vaccines is not the issue.
“We do have enough vaccine this month to vaccinate 100,000 people, although we don’t anticipate actually vaccinating that number of people in the next couple days; that probably will take a couple more weeks,” said Timothy Heider, a spokesman for the Oregon Health Authority.
Oregon’s sluggish pace getting health-care workers vaccinated is part of a nationwide problem: More than 14 million doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines have been shipped, but only 2.1 million people have gotten the vaccine so far.
Health and hospital officials in Oregon said the limited availability of ultra-cold freezer units in rural areas, combined with the Christmas holiday and confusion over when shipments would arrive, all contributed to delays in getting health workers and others vaccinated.
The Oregon Health Authority opted not to send any of the Pfizer vaccine to counties with hospitals that lacked ultra-cold storage and where the total health care workforce includes fewer than 2,500 people. The Samaritan hospitals in Newport and Lincoln City were able to get the Pfizer vaccine
