Administrators at a major COVID-19 vaccination clinic in Salem closed it for three of the first 12 days in operation, underscoring the challenges that may await an even bigger undertaking set to open on Wednesday in Portland.
As of Saturday, the clinic run by Salem Health at the Oregon State Fairgrounds administered 18,700 doses of COVID-19 vaccines during nine days of operations, or about 2,078 doses per day.
This equates to 223 vaccinations per hour, less than the hourly target of 250 Oregon residents that Governor Kate Brown said could be inoculated there. And the facility’s limited opening hours, averaging just nine a day, excluding the three days it was closed, as states like Arizona operate two clinics that are open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. (A New York Times analysis, however, indicated that Arizona has a higher share of unused doses than Oregon last week.)
The Salem clinic closed on January 11, four days after the inauguration, due to limited stock and fears that the clinic would have to refuse people who traveled to be vaccinated. It closed again on January 17 and 18 for rest and planning purposes, officials said.
Michael Gay, a spokesman for Salem Health, said last week that the hospital group is working well for a new initiative. “When everything is working perfectly, we can vaccinate up to 410 an hour, but it depends on a number of different factors, including the volume of people who get the vaccine, how many people use MyChart and the stability of our technology tools,” he said in last week .
Until this week, the Salem clinic was the largest in Oregon, followed by a lesser effort from Salem Health in Polk County. In Salem alone, the vaccination volume equaled almost one in ten vaccinations reported by the state by Saturday, although the state’s vaccination numbers are lagging.
A similar – and potentially significantly greater – effort will begin on Wednesday at the Oregon Convention Center in Portland. It will be operated by Portland’s four largest healthcare entities – Providence Health & Systems, Legacy Health, Kaiser Permanente and Oregon Health & Science University.
Mike Foley, a Kaiser spokesman who is speaking for the collaborative effort, said the health giants went to the exhibition park “to find out what Salem Health was doing”, but declined to provide details.
Foley said that Kaiser also ran its own small-scale clinic last weekend to prepare and how satisfied it is with the results. The effort at its Tualatin offices vaccinated around 3,000 people in two days.
Foley said the convention center’s new clinic will be by appointment only, and he hopes to release more information on Wednesday.
Foley confirmed that health groups are in contact with school districts, whose employees have priority over the elderly by Brown and state health leaders. Vaccination for teachers is scheduled to start on Monday according to Brown’s schedule.
It is not immediately clear what enforcement mechanisms will exist at the Portland clinic. In Salem, the clinic operated essentially under an honor system, with some notable inconsistencies in eligibility.
The Salem clinic is open to anyone in the state’s Phase 1A group, which includes health professionals and long-term care residents, among others, but they are not required to provide any identification document that proves they qualify. . Gay said the “self-attested” eligibility system “will not be perfect” and “depends on the integrity of Oregon residents to honor the transition guidelines”.
Gay said Salem Health could not specify how many people manipulated the system and did not say whether the health group cared if people were being vaccinated earlier than allowed. Anyone who received the first dose can receive a second, he added.
The Salem Reporter has documented several examples of negligent screening, allowing people to get the vaccine. In one case, a music instructor in his 60s at Chemeketa Community College was able to get a vaccine without asking questions.
In response to questions about failures in the process, Gay responded by email: “Through careful planning and time taken to withdraw doses, especially at the end of the vaccine clinic hours, no dose of the vaccine was wasted. Due to self-certification, we are unable to quantify the number of people who may have fallen outside the current level of Phase 1a of the OHA.
The Salem clinic had National Guard officials to help meet the demand, a request that was made by health leaders and later released at a press conference at the governor’s office.
Stephen Bomar, director of public relations for the Oregon Military Department, said the National Guard will remain on site in Salem and elsewhere in the coming months.
Gay said the National Guard is still helping to administer vaccines and that the clinic will be open “as long as vaccines are available”.
“It’s been fun and encouraging to see people full of hope,” said Gay by email. “Tears are common.”
– Andrew Theen; [email protected]; 503-294-4026; @andrewtheen