Mills County Public Health Office Hoping To Begin '1B' COVID-19 Vaccinations Feb. 1

Since beginning its first round of COVID-19 vaccinations of Mills County’s priority 1A population in late December, Mills County Public Health has administered over 500 vaccines.

Last Tuesday, the first day public health began collecting names for a waiting list to administer the vaccine to the 1B priority population – which prioritizes all seniors over age 65 –more than 500 county residents alone signed up.
Phones have been ringing off the hook at the Mills County Public Health offices, Administrator Julie Lynes said.
“We opened our line and we had 500 calls and two people answering the phones,” said Lynes.

Last week, the Iowa Department of Public Health issued its guidelines for the next phase of vaccinations, those in the 1B priority, would begin Feb. 1. The state also released revised distribution priorities tiers for the 1B vaccinations that makes anyone over age 65 eligible to receive the COVID-19 vaccine during any tier. Topping the five tier priority list are first responders and pre-K through 12th grade school staff, early childhood educators and childcare workers.

Tier two, the largest demographic size according to the state at 600,000 residents, includes food, agriculture, distribution and manufacturing workers and individuals with disabilities living home settings with direct care staff.
Tier three are staff and/or individuals living in congregate settings and government officials and staff engaging in state business at the Iowa Capitol during legislative session. Tier four and five include inspectors for hospitals, long term care facilities and child safety as well as correctional facility staff and incarcerated individuals.

In all, the state estimates, the number of eligible Iowans in the Phase 1B priority to be approximately 1,250,000 people.
Public health’s vaccine wait list, which is continuing to grow, will be prioritized first among those 65-years-or-older and disabled people living in a home with attendant care. The state has recommended vaccines be split “50-50” between those residents and half going to school personnel, first responders and health inspectors for long-term care facilities and restaurants.

“It doesn’t have to be a perfect fifty-fifty split but the state has told us to earmark it for those groups,” she said.
Lynes cautioned the Feb. 1 date is not set in stone and her office is beholden to both the state’s allotment guidelines and vaccine availability. It does not mean everyone who wants a vaccine in the 1B group, or even everyone on the wait list, is guaranteed a vaccine that day.

MCPH administered the first round of Moderna vaccines to the county’s eligible 1A population on Dec. 23. Last Wednesday, 28 days after that first shot, they started the follow up booster shots of the vaccine.
While it is still unknown when or exactly how many public health will begin vaccinating in the next phase, WHERE they will host that vaccination clinic is set.

Public health has secured the former Shopko – and later AgriVision – building at 902 South Locust St., in Glenwood to host the vaccination clinic. The vaccinations will be by appointment only.

“We think the number of vaccines we’re going to be doing going forward is going to grow exponentially,” Lynes said. “We’re just planning on that.”

That anticipated demand necessitated the move to the former Shopko space, and its 35,000 square feet of open floor space, for large scale vaccination clinics.

“We certainly do not want to offer a vaccine clinic with large groups of people huddled close together for extended periods of time,” she said. “That’s against the advice we’ve been given since the get go.”

The Shopko space and the parking lot, she said, is conducive to a socially distanced vaccination clinic that can serve a large population. Lynes said the hope is to vaccinate four individuals every five minutes.

“They’ll go in one side, get a quick health screening, get their vaccination and then move to the other side of the building,” she said. “They have to have a 15 minute wait time so we can monitor them to make sure there’s no adverse effects. That’s the bottleneck. We want people to be able to take that 15 minutes six feet apart. We want to get every person in and out in 20 minutes.”

Lynes declined to guess how many county residents would fit the 1B criteria.

The 1A population was a “very narrow and limited” group, she said, consisting mostly of front line medical workers and first responders.  The 1B population represents a far larger demographic, with the 65-and-older group making up the bulk of those numbers.

The state of Iowa as a whole, according to the Iowa Department of Public Health, will be receiving 19,500 doses per week to start with in hopes of reaching 39,000 doses per week by Feb. 9.

The day after Mills County Public Health receives its shipment of vaccines, Lynes said, they will turnaround the vaccination clinic the very next day.

The very first shipment of vaccines MCPH received on Dec. 22 was 300 doses. Lynes has no idea when or how many vaccines they will get next.

“It could be 100, 300, a 1,000,” she said. “That is going to be the driving force behind what scale of clinic we can have.”
With a new federal administration emphasizing an aggressive national plan for curbing the spread of the deadly virus as its top priority, its uncertain what impact that will have on what are expected to be mass vaccinations over the next several months.

“It’s just like COVID has been all along,” she said. “You do the best you can and roll with information that changes almost daily.”

Lynes admits she has concerns about vaccine production and its availability in the coming weeks.

“I think everyone is doing their best,” she said. “But there’s going to be way more demand than supply, at least initially.”