- All asylum residents and employees.
- All health care works with direct contact with patients.
Dr. Nancy Bennett, Monroe County Vaccination Task Force: “And that means anyone, from the person who checks in at your doctor’s office to the person who washes the floor in the patient’s room, to the doctor or nurse who is caring for a patient.”
PHASE 1B
- Non-essential healthcare workers and anyone over 75 years of age.
They do not have a start date for Phase 1b.
Dr. Nancy Bennett, Monroe County Vaccination Task Force: “It could take two weeks, it could take six weeks.”
PHASE 1C
- People between 65 and 74 years old and anyone over 16 with chronic diseases.
LEVEL 2
- People who should have been vaccinated in Phase 1, but were lost.
PHASE 3
- All others between 16 and 64 years old.
Dr. Michael Mendoza, Monroe County Health Commissioner: “When you are available to receive the vaccine, I promise – you will know.”
Dr. Nancy Bennett, Monroe County Vaccination Task Force: “For people over 75, it is highly likely that they will be contacted by your hospital or doctor’s office. For people who are essential workers, they will likely be contacted by their employer.”
This is where we are in terms of vaccine distribution.
In three weeks, 20,000 injections were given to people in Phase 1a.
The county health department gave 1,200 more.
Then there were hundreds administered in local nursing homes.
But there are 100,000 health professionals on the front lines in the region and a total of 1.2 million eligible to be vaccinated in the region.
At the pace of the system, the entire region will not be vaccinated until the end of the year.
Dr. Michael Mendoza, Monroe County Health Commissioner: “We are going to have to accelerate to get to the finish line, which I would like to think it is sometime this fall.”
Mendoza said that the logistics are incomprehensible.
Let’s share the example he set. It is about scheduling vaccines for 100,000 health professionals and maintaining social distance and a waiting period to ensure that they do not have an allergic reaction.
Dr. Michael Mendoza, Monroe County Health Commissioner: “With these vaccines, you have to wait 15 minutes. So, you can’t have many people coming to get the vaccines at once, because you may have to breach social distance to have them waiting in the same space.”
This is one of the reasons why Mendoza says the vaccination system is moving slowly.
He said that there are all kinds of problems in the system.
Brean: “What do you mean by twists? What are the twists in the process now?”
Mendoza: “Well, as I mentioned before, scheduling is a twist. We have to find a way to schedule all of these individuals from a variety of sectors in our community. And we currently don’t have a robust process for scheduling.”
Mendoza says they are working on it and should have corrections by the end of the week.
Mendoza: “Obviously, the biggest twist is when we get to the point of having a public clinic for the whole community. These twists are manageable. These are the ones we are planning. And we are still in the early stages of hiring and working on all the logistics for them. “