Earlier today, nurse Lindsey Mendez, a member of the county’s Vaccine Task Force, responded to questions from local media about the county’s COVID-19 vaccination efforts.
The questions were due before today’s big announcement from the state that the vaccine would be made available to anyone 50 years of age or older starting next week, and to all Californians from mid-April, so the county’s implementation of these new guidelines has not been addressed.
Video above, approximate transcript below.
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Hello, we are here for media availability on March 25 with family nurse and member of the COVID-19 task force Lindsey Mendez. Thank you for being with us. Would you like to start by approaching the community?
yea. Hello, Humboldt. Here is Lindsay Mendez again, just to give a brief update on vaccination and the changes being made at the state and municipal levels and how the vaccine will be distributed as we go along. Now, I would like to tell the community that we had a small allocation in Janssen’s past, but at the moment we have not received an allocation to donate. We are receiving Moderna and Pfizer regularly, as in the past, but we are fluctuating with the values we are receiving. That said, we will continue to have vaccine clinics across the county with our partners and the public health department, and we would like to encourage you to obtain the first consultation that is offered to you with any vaccine that is offered to you at this time. And always remember to distance yourself socially, wear your mask and wash your hands, as not everyone is vaccinated in Humboldt County or in the world.
From KMUD News: Can you share more information about how vaccine distribution will change with the move to MyTurn… .do you support the move?
MyTurn is a platform that is being used for people to apply for vaccines in the state of California. This platform has been designed so that in several languages you can log in and see if you are eligible to receive the vaccine and make an appointment. At the moment, in Humboldt County, we are not using MyTurn, but many other counties are and we are collecting information about how it works. What we do know is that they are changing things on their platform so that CEPs can have certain restrictions and we are not sure yet. However, as we change, we are confident that our staff in the public health department will be able to train and embark workers at clinics to use MyTurn properly for vaccine documentation and inventory. And we hope that, with the opening, we will be able to help the population to sign up for a consultation that they will be able to obtain at the moment it is available. Thanks.
From KMUD News: We understand that the My Turn system works only with two hospital computer programs, which none of the hospitals in Humboldt County currently uses. How will this affect the local deployment for the team and the audience?
At the moment, I cannot comment on how the local hospitals will be managing the MyTurn switch with their electronic medical record systems, but I would say that public health is handling it in an appropriate way to integrate their team to learn MyTurn, in both the the public side and also the clinical side of how to register patients in clinics and also how to use the documentation system.
From KMUD News: Will people outside our area be eligible to receive a vaccine in Humboldt County?
First of all, I would like to say that the goal in the state of California and in the entire United States is to end the pandemic and vaccinate everyone, including our neighbors. Even people with whom we are not necessarily sharing a county. With that said, we are talking to MyTurn, the employees of that platform, and discussing this with Blue Shield about concerns around people who are eligible to receive the vaccine and who may not be in our municipality. We do not know what the outcome of this discussion will be, but we are prioritizing each county resident to receive the vaccine at this time.
From KMUD News: Do you foresee that other vaccines will be approved for use in the United States?
I don’t know how to answer that question because we haven’t been informed that the FDA is trying to approve vaccines at this point, but we will keep them updated as we find out about any other vaccines that would be arriving in the United States.
From Redheaded Blackbelt: So Hum Health started offering the vaccine to a wider range of local residents, will this also happen in northern Humboldt?
At the moment, the state advisory council is giving us guidance on how we are going to open up to a larger portion of the population. These guidelines are from the advisory committee and all of our local vaccinators use the guidelines from the advisory committee to approve vaccination status. We will be using the guideline that people aged 16 to 64 with high-risk health conditions – which you can find listed on the state’s website – will be approved and we encourage people to call their primary care providers and also the Information Center Joint to access the form of interest if you do not have a primary care provider. Please be aware at this point that the vaccine supply has not always been a static number in our municipality and that we will be reaching everyone as soon as possible with the amount of vaccine that is offered to us.
From the Redheaded Blackbelt: Interestingly, some residents of Humboldt County said they are waiting for the Johnson and Johnson vaccine to avoid having to take a second dose. They are delaying the appointment of vaccines currently available. Is it a bad idea? Why or why not?
As a health care provider, I fully understand people who want to choose the vaccine they would like to receive, but I would like to remind everyone that the vaccine that is available is the vaccine that they should get. Therefore, waiting for Johnson and Johnson is not necessarily helpful in achieving collective immunity or getting yourself vaccinated quickly. We also don’t know how Janssen’s supply will reach Humboldt County and in what quantities. Therefore, if you are offered a vaccine, we recommend that you get it.
From the Redheaded Blackbelt: The Johnson and Johnson vaccine has been evaluated at an efficacy rate of about 66% to 72%. Can you talk about why the efficacy rate of the Johnson and Johnson vaccine differs regionally, and whether you know what that number looks like specifically for Humboldt County?
Therefore, at the moment we have no data on the regional efficacy of the Johnson and Johnson vaccine in Humboldt County because it was not researched in this way. Drug trials that continue around the world for the Johnson and Johnson vaccine as well as other vaccines will continue to provide us with data on regional issues, but we don’t have that at the moment. What we know about the Johnson and Johnson vaccine is that it is effective, as stated between 66% and 72%, for the large population surveyed worldwide. And we also know that it will reduce deaths and serious illnesses by 100% with hospitalization and that is why we understand that this is a great vaccine.
From the Times-Standard: Will the county reduce some age limits, BMI or other factors to make vaccines more available and prevent doses being missed?
I would like to tell the community that there is no unused vaccine in Humboldt County at this time. Limited supply is more of an obstacle than having an unused excess vaccine. As we open up to the broader population, those with high-risk conditions in many age groups, we have to be aware that the supply will dictate how quickly and efficiently we can get through these populations and that we will never be wasting doses.
From Times-Standard: Were there any challenges in equipping vaccination sites with staff who can serve Spanish or Hmong speakers?
Yes, we have coordinated services with community partners that are bilingual and bicultural for our vaccine clinics and we continue to ask and recruit members to help us with administrative and administrative work, together with the vaccination team.