County Manager Jim Barbee reported on the Churchill Coun- ty COVID response during the County Commission meeting Wednesday, saying that the county is continuing to work toward administering the COVID vaccine in the community. Last week county staff provided nearly 400 new shots along with the regu- lar booster shots for the second round of the vaccine.
The county has a system set up to use CART (Churchill Area Regional Transportation) to take people to fairgrounds who do not have transportation. There is also a homebound program set up to provide vaccines for people who cannot come to the POD site. A nurse and support staff go to the home, provide the vaccine, and then sit and wait to make sure there are no adverse reactions.
Anyone who needs the CART transportation to the vaccine locations, or the homebound service should call 775-423-6695, option 2 to speak with the Churchill County Health staff about the options.
Barbee also reported that, “The issue that we have run into this week is the same that all of Nevada is running into is the vaccine has not been shipped because of the weather in the east, so we are not expecting to get dosages at the same level that we’ve seen each week and Shannon (director of the Social Service department) and her staff are making adjustments for those and we basically won’t have enough doses to do booster shots.”
He said the local pharmacies that are participating in the state and federal pharmacy programs, do have dosages and are utilizing those through their systems. This week the county will do as many boosters as they can and roll any remaining into next week as the bigger dosages come through.
“It appears that next week if everything opens up like its supposed to, we should get the orders for this week, next week,” he said.
Additionally, Barbee said there have been some notable shifts in the Governor’s directives, going from 25% occupancy for businesses to 35% last week, and the state directives are set to loosen up by March 15th with a move back to 50% capacity. There is also talk of transferring some authorities to the individual counties by May 1st.
Barbee said the Churchill County positivity rate on Wednesday was 6% on the rolling 14-day average. The county is not testing as much since the vaccine program has started, which directly impacts the positively rate when the volume is not as high. There is still testing happening at the vaccine POD.
In terms of tracking the vaccinations, “We’re trying to get a good feeling for how we’re doing in the county thus far,” said Barbee, “but there isn’t a consolidated reporting system at the state.” The state is working on developing a vaccination dashboard that would bring together all the numbers that were done at Banner, Walgreen’s, and the county level in one place. “I believe we are at the county about 1,800 doses so far through the POD system.”
Commissioner Heath asked who made the decision not to vaccinate at the hospital anymore, and Barbee responded that the county made that request.
“Because of the drag we were seeing in terms of getting people at that age 70 and above (vaccinated) was restricting the county from being able to move forward to the next groups of people,” said Barbee. “That appears to have worked last week and cleared all the appointments that Banner had out for three weeks, so we were able to get all those and that moves us toward doing some of the chosen industries.”
If the county receives the full vaccine allocation next week the move will be made to the next level of vaccinations for the agriculture and food processing industry employees, as well as the 18- to 64-year-olds with underlying conditions. More information on the details for that step will be provided by the County on Monday and The Fallon Post will publish that online as soon as possible.
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