By Pepper Fisher
PORT ANGELES – With more and more local health care workers and first responders in the state’s 1A group getting the vaccine in the last 2 weeks, we thought we’d check in with County Health Officer Dr. Allison Berry Unthank to see how the process was going.
Our first question was whether the vaccine is required by any of the employers of that 1A Group. She says it is not mandated that those who are offered the vaccine must take it, but that they are strongly encouraged to do so.
We asked her what the participation rate is so far.
“I have to say, a pretty good participation rate. So about 75% of those who are offered the vaccine get it. Sometimes, you know, it just takes talking to folks about it, or even people seeing their friends get it and realizing that they did just fine. And so I think the more that people see people do well and that side effects are rare and mild, I think we’ll see more and more people taking it up. If that continues, if we can keep that trajectory, that’ll be enough to get us to herd immunity.”
Dr. Unthank says there are several reasons people give for taking a pass on the vaccine. She says some are concerned about the speed at which the vaccines were produced, and worry that corners may have been cut. Dr. Unthank says Covid-19 is similar to some other viruses that scientists were already working on, and that, combined with an unprecedented worldwide effort, sped up the process.
She says a lot of people are concerned about the side effects they may have read or heard about. We asked the her what she’s been seeing here in our county in terms of side effects.
“Yeah, so we do see very similar side effects with this vaccine compared to other vaccines like the flu vaccine. So right now, based on our current administration’s locally, we’ve seen about two percent of people who get the vaccine develop, kind of, flu-like symptoms for about a day after they get the vaccine. About 10% of people get a sore arm, which is very normal after vaccines, as you probably know, and that’s really it. That’s all that we’ve observed as far as side effects locally.”