Whatcom County prioritizes first COVID-19 vaccines expected this month
A limited number of vaccine doses likely will be available in Whatcom County by later this month, the Health Department’s top doctor said Tuesday, Dec. 1.
“We are preparing as a county to have it arrive here by late December,” said Dr. Greg Stern, the county health officer.
“There will be a limited amount of doses, they’ll be going to folks based on prioritization,” Stern told the Whatcom County Council at an online meeting of the Health Board.
Stern said Whatcom County health officials will be following guidelines from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“We anticipate the initial doses will going to folks working with COVID patients. This will be health care workers with the highest risk,” he said.
“If there’s a thousand doses there won’t be enough to cover everybody with the initial delivery,” he said.
“I wouldn’t expect them to be widely available for several months after the initial few doses are received,” he said. “So I ask people to remain patient and keep doing the things that they can do to slow transmission. That’s going to be critical.”
A CDC panel decided Tuesday that health-care workers and nursing home patients would get priority when the first COVID-19 vaccine doses are available.
Those two groups number about 24 million people among the U.S. population of about 330 million.
St. Joseph hospital is Whatcom County’s largest employer with 3,116 workers, according to a 2019 report from the Center for Economic and Business Research at Western Washington University.
Vaccines produced by Pfizer and Moderna, the two that are expected to receive emergency approval soon, must be stored at sub-freezing temperatures. And each requires two doses about three weeks apart.
St. Joseph hospital is hoping for state approval as a vaccination site, hospital spokeswoman Bev Mayhew told The Bellingham Herald in an email.
“PeaceHealth St. Joseph has the necessary ultra-cold storage for the vaccine and has notified the state Department of Health in our application to be a distribution site,” Mayhew said.
Current estimates project that no more than 20 million doses of each company’s vaccine will be available by the end of 2020, according to The Associated Press.
This story was originally published December 2, 2020 at 5:00 AM.
