BRYAN, Texas (KBTX) – The Brazos County Health District and local city and county leaders are working together to come up with a plan for COVID-19 distribution once a vaccine is available.
This comes after the CDC gave all 50 states a “playbook” for when a free vaccine is available for the public.
Sara Mendez with the Brazos County Health District says things are in the planning stage, and they have not gotten complete guidance from the state. Still, they are discussing some ideas for how they could safely administer a vaccine.
In the past, the health district has held free drive-thru flu shot events, all as a way to practice administering a vaccine quickly if needed.
“All those exercises are to be able to prepare for a time like this. So planning ahead, we would probably look at doing something similar with the COVID-19 vaccine,” said Mendez. “When we do these exercises to be able to offer the flu vaccine, we choose a location that’s large enough to where people can drive through. So they will stop at the first station, they will fill out the paperwork, then will move onto the next station, get some more information and then they will drive through and actually receive the vaccine.”
Mendez says they also implemented similar situations for the drive-thru COVID-19 testing that has happened multiple times within the county.
College Station Mayor Karl Mooney says they are also looking at making sure they get the vaccines to the people in the community who are most at risk.
“First thing of course is to identify our most susceptible population. We don’t really have to reinvent the wheel,” said Mooney. “We will have to sit down and see what our quantities are that we have, and how to best deliver it.”
Bryan Mayor Andrew Nelson says they plan to continue working with experts to optimize access.
“For everyone who wants this vaccine, we need to make sure that they have it,” said Nelson.
Mendez says things are still very early in the planning phases, but they are getting ready.
“There’s potentially the chance that there could be two vaccines that are required this time,” said Mendez. “It could be similar to the flu, that every year we would need to get a new COVID-19 vaccine. So although the vaccine is going to help, and help us get back to our lives, there are still those things that we will need to do to prevent getting COVID-19.”
The CDC says if a vaccine is ready by November/December, it will likely initially be distributed to high-risk communities, along with healthcare workers and first responders. They expect a widely available vaccine to not be ready for the public until Summer/Spring 2021.
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