Coronavirus in rural America (Part CXV): More vaccine news

Efforts to get the coronavirus vaccine "into arms" has been a big story this week.  I'm going to briefly cover just a few of the news items I consumed on this topic.  

The Los Angeles Times reported Tuesday out of Mendocino County, California, population 87,841, where a freezer storing vaccines failed on January 4, 2021.  Anita Chabria reports under the headline, "Its freezer kaput, this NorCal hospital had two hours to give out 600 vaccine shots."  The hospital is in the county seat, Ukiah, population 16,075.

Here's an excerpt about the third of those doses that went to the county because they "belong to the county" and were merely being stored by the hospital.  Specifically they went to the county jail.   

Lt. John Bednar, who helps run the county jail, said his facility received 97 of those doses at about 1 p.m. The jail has been experiencing an outbreak, with about three dozen inmates out of 250 currently positive, he said. About a dozen staff have also fallen ill with the virus.

Faced with only an hour to use the shots, sheriff’s officials decided to administer them to staff and front-line personnel because they didn’t think there was enough time to gain consent and organize a safe protocol for inmates. Four county medical staff began giving the shots, said Bednar.

The story quotes Bednar regarding when the vaccines arrived: 

I was like, ‘Oh, boy, let’s get going.'  I think it went as well as it could.

NPR reported today on how well the immunization scheme is going in one rural Colorado town.  Kirk Seigler reports from Oak Creek, population 844.  He quotes Gene Bracegirdle, a firefighter and EMT in training, who is pleased to have just gotten the shot:  

The fact that it is here is kind of mind-blowing, like, they care enough to reach out to the rural communities. ... It's exciting to see the initiative being taken.  

The story acknowledges the spatial challenges in such places: 

The vaccine arrived in Oak Creek via a blue igloo cooler in a new mobile clinic set up by the local Routt County health department. Officials used CARES Act money to get things going. The task at hand is huge. Health officials must distribute the shots to a population of about 25,000 people spread across 2,300 square miles of northwest Colorado.

Another story yesterday commented on what West Virginia, popularly thought of as a rural state, is doing well in terms of vaccine distribution and immunization.  Yuki Noguchi reports from Morgantown, West Virginia.  She explains that CVS and Walgreens pharmacies, which the federal government has engaged to help with vaccine distribution to long-term care facilities, are not common in West Virginia.  Thus the state has had to look elsewhere for partners in its vaccine roll-out.  Noguchi quotes a pharmacist and clinical professor at West Virginia University, Gretchen Garofoli:  

We have a lot of independent pharmacies or smaller pharmacies that are in the more rural communities, so in order to get the vaccine out to some of those areas, we needed to follow something a little bit different.

The story continues: 

Many long-term care sites in the state already use local pharmacies for other vaccines and medicines as well as twice-weekly coronavirus testing of residents and staff. The state decided to piggyback off those existing relationships. Because those pharmacies already had data on many patients, it was easier to begin scheduling appointments in early December, securing consent forms and matching doses to eligible patients — logistics that are confounding efforts in many other states.

This story in particular features a rural lack-of-anonymity, reliance-on-community angle.