By Pepper Fisher
PORT ANGELES – The final mass vaccination events in Clallam County will be at Port Angeles High School this weekend. And it’s not for lack of vaccine, volunteers or people who need to be vaccinated. It’s for lack of participation.
The Jamestown Tribe has already discontinued their drive-through events in Sequim, except for some second dose appointments, after vaccinating over 17,000 county residents. The Tribe’s Health Director Brent Simcosky told us that before the Johnson and Johnson vaccine was paused, they had thousands of doses ready to administer, but only 400 people signed up.
“Vaccination tents and mass vaccination events are built for volume. And so, you know, on a busy day, we were seeing over a thousand people at our drive-through vaccination tents, and we just aren’t getting that demand now. We’re geared up to have 70-some volunteers and staff working in a vaccination tent and we can’t do it if there’s only 300 people.”
With the goal being to get at least 70% of the County’s population vaccinated, and we’re at about 55% now, health officials have found it necessary to adopt new strategies to make it to the finish line.
In other words, “If the mountain will not come to Muhammad, then Muhammad must go to the mountain.”
Health officer Dr. Allison Berry explains.
“We’ve largely tap the demand for the mass vaccination sites, and now we really want to bring vaccine to people where they’re at. So we already have some partnerships set up with the Port Angeles Chamber, and also a couple of local restaurants. So Barhop has already volunteered to be a site for one of our vaccine events. We’re going to be putting together a “Shot and a Beer” event, where we give you the shots and then you can get a beer. We’re looking forward to as many creative options as possible to get vaccine to the people who need it.”
Dr. Berry says another part of the strategy will be to take the vaccine to restaurant workers.
“One of the things we heard from restaurant workers is, part of why they weren’t coming to the mass vaccination events is the hours just don’t work for their schedule. So we’re hoping by making it as convenient as possible and bringing it directly to them that we can make this more accessible to them.”
School kids 16 and over are also part of the strategy, with health officials working on a plan to go directly to the schools and vaccinating students whose parents have signed a consent form.