Polk County Public Health (PCPH) Director Sarah Reese provided an update to the Polk County Commissioners Tuesday on the current state of COVID-19 and the vaccination rollout in the county.
Reese said she could happily report the rate of COVID-19 in the county has been continuing to fall. “We collect from Thursday through Wednesday,” said Reese. “The last seven days we had 17 new cases which is considerably lower from the weeks prior. We hope that continues into the future.”
Unfortunately, the vaccination report didn’t show significant improvement in vaccine availability. “Residents of Polk County can be very thankful for the partnerships we have across the county,” said Reese. “Our health care partners, pharmacy partners, and public health are working very hard to get the vaccine out as quickly as we get it. The challenge, of course, is the amount of vaccine that is currently available. While we’re getting smaller amounts of allocations, we’re getting it out as quickly as we can. We were informed Friday we’ll be getting an allocation (100 doses) specifically for Polk County schools, so we are working to notify the school districts and set up those vaccine clinics.”
Reese also encouraged those with questions about the vaccine to reach out to PCPH or their primary care providers for the answers. “Slowing but surely we are getting more vaccine,” said Reese. “We really appreciate people’s patience and understanding. We also appreciate people’s interest in the vaccine. There are lots of questions and we can certainly take questions at the Public Health Department or through your primary care provider. If you have questions, feel free to call, ask, and make sure your questions are answered.”
There have also been some hiccups with the pilot sites. Reese reported that over the weekend an erroneous email was sent out canceling the administration of the second dose for many at the pilot sites. That has been corrected, but Reese said the state is evaluating where the pilot sites are and are not effective. “The pilot sites that the state rolled out have been an excellent opportunity to get more vaccine into each region,” said Reese. “Of course, every community and county is different. In some parts of the state, the vaccine pilot sites have been a shining success and in other parts of the state, there are opportunities to explore how to do it differently. In local public health, we do many of the same activities across the state, but our needs and culture are different across the state. The state is looking at the vaccine sites and how they can perhaps do that differently to utilize the vaccination plans that were in place for each county, specifically in northwest Minnesota.”
Reese also addressed why the state hasn’t completely moved beyond Phase 1A in vaccinations. Reese said some larger health care organizations in the metro still need vaccines but also added that the governor’s Vaccine Advisory Committee can add groups at any time to a tier, which they did last week adding a new group to 1A. “I can’t speak to that for other parts of the state,” said Reese. “In Polk County, we are very happy that we were able to work with our health care partners to provide vaccine to our health care providers very quickly which would of course include EMS, fire, and so forth. The challenge or the hiccup we could call it is that the governor’s office has the ability and authority to add groups to different priorities. Last week he did add an additional group related to medical transport to the 1A group. That just means that we need to make those appropriate contacts, which we have, and coordinate when the vaccine is available for those individuals. We have provided vaccine to the applicable priority groups and expanding when we’re told that there are additional groups in Phase 1A.”
Reese said that all previous doses of the vaccine allocated through Polk County Public Health have been administered. “The Minnesota Department of Health rolled out a vaccine dashboard,” said Reese. “That is available online. As of last week, our department had administered not quite 600 doses ourselves and we have been working with our health care partners who have delivered additional doses as well.”
According to the Minnesota Vaccine Dashboard (here) 3,459 Polk County residents had received at least one vaccine dose, and of those 931 had completed the vaccine series as of Tuesday afternoon.
