By Quinton Smith/YachatsNews.com
Nurses at Samaritan Pacific Communities Hospital in Newport began administering the first doses of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine in Lincoln County on Monday, giving shots to front-line employees who eagerly but patiently lined a second-floor hallway as they waited to enter a conference room to get the injections.
By the end of the week, the hospital hopes to have given 233 doses to employees and off-campus medical providers — everyone from doctors to housecleaning staff — who are the most likely to be exposed to a patient with COVID-19. Some 19-23 days later the same employees will get the second dose in a two-shot protocol.
In all, an estimated 400 people will get the vaccine, ranked on a scale of 6 to 1 on their potential exposure to the virus. Because of the limited supply — the Newport hospital got just 38 vials of the Pfizer vaccine Friday — that process will take a month.
Once health care workers are vaccinated, then other front-line workers in the community will come next in a process that has only been partially worked out — it is a dynamic process dependent on vaccine deliveries — between the Oregon Health Authority, Lincoln County Public Health, Samaritan Health Systems and major pharmacies.
On Tuesday, Oregon Gov. Kate Brown asked the OHA and a distribution advisory committee to prioritize teachers and other school personnel after nursing home residents, their staff and the elderly get vaccines. The OHA also set up a statewide online dashboard Tuesday to show how many and where vaccines doses have been administered.
Under a separate state rollout plan, pharmacies began administering the vaccine Monday to nursing homes in the Portland area, with the program spreading to staff and residents of all long-term care centers throughout Oregon over the next month. Nursing homes have accounted for 40 percent of all COVID-19 related deaths in Oregon.
One of those getting a shot Monday in Newport was Dr. Scott Grupas, who has overseen or worked in the hospital’s emergency room for 11 years. He regularly sees people coming to the hospital either with COVID-19 symptoms of “just the fear and anxiety” of getting it.
He wants to reassure them that getting the vaccine — either the Pfizer vaccine or one coming soon from Moderna — is the right thing to do.
“I’ve personally done my own research … and as a physician and part of the community, I feel comfortable telling anybody they should get it,” Grupas told YachatsNews. “All the conversations I have had with (with fellow employees) is excitement and eagerness to get one.”
Vaccines in the nick of time
The vaccines come at a crucial time in the worldwide coronavirus pandemic and the rising number of cases and deaths in Oregon and the United States. Lincoln County is experiencing its own surge of cases, resulting late last week in much tighter restrictions on businesses, social gatherings and delaying the partial re-opening of schools.
Samaritan Pacific Communities Hospital got its first 38 vials Friday, following a delivery Thursday to its headquarters hospital in Corvallis. Samaritan’s other hospital in Lincoln County — Samaritan North Lincoln Hospital in Lincoln City — also started administering its ration of doses Monday.
The Pfizer vaccine needs special handling — to be stored at -80 degrees Fahrenheit, which complicates distribution and handling once the vaccine reaches its destination. But it’s not a problem for the Newport hospital, which completed a complete rebuilding of its facilities last year.
“As luck would have it, we have a -80 degree freezer here,” said Jane Russell, the hospital’s chief operating officer.
The hospital-level process of administering the shots is as dynamic as the overall plans to distribute the vaccine across Oregon.
Before starting the doses, Samaritan Pacific administrators ranked each job and employee into six tiers based on their likelihood of being exposed to COVID-19. That meant not only emergency room doctors like Grupas, but housecleaners and nursing assistants as well as intensive care unit staff. Hospital administrators are at the bottom of the list, Russell said.
Russell said 196 staff were put in the first group, Tier 6; 158 in the next, Tier 5. Some Tier 5 employees should be able to get their first shot this week, Russell said. The Tier 5 group includes medical providers elsewhere in the community who treat patients at Samaritan Pacific.
As others have discovered across the country, the Newport nurses are also finding that many of the Pfizer vials have six doses in them — not the expected five. That will allow more employees to get the vaccine this first go-around.
The shots are being administered in a second-floor conference room. Employees wait outside in a long hallway as nurses usher them in 1-2-3 at a time. Once the vaccine is thawed, nurses have six hours to administer it. Nurses giving the shots are closely watched by another as they load the exact amount — 0.3 milliliters — of the vaccine dose into each syringe.
“We’re seeing a very high engagement among our staff,” Russell said, in response to a question about the hesitancy of some health care workers across the country to be the first to be vaccinated.
Russell said it is not yet clear when Samaritan Health Systems will get the Moderna vaccine, which was cleared for use last week by the federal government.
“It’s all kind of fast and furious,” Russell said. “This is new territory.”
Still, the pandemic’s emergency is not over, both Grupas and Russell warned.
“Once you get your shot you’re not just ripping off your mask,” Russell said. “There’s going to be another 6-8 months still of masks, personal protective equipment and other precautions before we’re through this.”
