The Green River District Health Department hopes to receive a COVID-19 vaccine “soon,” according to Public Health Director Clay Horton.
The first priority, he said, will be getting critical care workers vaccinated, such as emergency management service workers and other health care workers with direct patient contact. Horton said he hopes to receive vaccinations by next week.
“I’m hopeful for next week, but we haven’t received confirmation yet and we have seven counties and I don’t know if we’ll get all seven counties or if we’ll just get some counties,” Horton said. “We’re hoping to be notified of that within the next day or so,” he said on Thursday.
Once vaccinations are received, Horton said GRDHD will have the capacity to store and maintain the vaccine and plan to administer it to recipients on-site at health department locations.
While GRDHD does not have access to an ultra-low freezer, which is required to maintain the Pfizer vaccine, according to Horton, he said the health department is equipped to receive the Moderna vaccine, which can be stored up to six months in a normal freezer and has a 30-day shelf-life once it is thawed.
“We certainly have the capability of handling and storing and maintaining the Moderna vaccine … the requirements for it are very similar to vaccines that we already routinely handle,” he said. “It should not be an issue at all in terms of the way we’re equipped and the way our staff’s trained.”
Horton said the health department does not know how much of the vaccine it will receive. He said, however, GRDHD will be focused on administering it to those at highest risk first and getting as many people vaccinated as quickly as possible.
Horton said he hopes to have the vaccine available for the general public by the spring.
“It’s going to be a slow process in some senses … because we know that a lot of people are going to want to take it immediately, but we’re just asking everybody to be patient. We’re going to do this a quickly as we can and as soon as we get the vaccine that’s available,” he said.
As far as the current outlook for COVID-19 in the region, Horton said people still need to be vigilant over the holiday season and as restaurants open back up, to take health and safety recommendations seriously, socially distance and continue wearing masks in public.
“We are seeing some relief in the current incident rate than we were experiencing through November and that first week of December,” he said. “That really is an indication that all of these things that we’ve been doing as far as community mitigation efforts, all the sacrifices that people have been making … it’s had an impact.”
