Summit County Health Director Rich Bullough says he’s excited this week to be taking some of the first official steps to have Covid vaccine delivered here.
Bullough says there’s a light at the end of the tunnel—but it’s still a fairly long tunnel.
Bullough told KPCW that on Tuesday, he signed the first order requesting a vaccine delivery. He outlined the plans for how the doses will be available in Summit County.
“We’re having real consistent and frequent meetings. We’re talking right now about potentially three drive-thru facilities—one in Kamas, one in Coalville, one in Park City, and then probably a walk-through facility, perhaps in the heart of town. We’re still trying to refine those specific protocols and sites.”
He said currently, the decisions about allocating the vaccine are somewhat of a moving target. But they have received draft guidelines about what population sectors are prioritized..
“This is gonna be different than H1-N1. There are gonna be direct shipments, first of all, to hospitals. And of course the medical care-givers are the primary target. They’re at the top of the list to receive these vaccines, as they should be—five hospitals across Utah. And then there’ll be a second tier of shipments that will go to other facilities. And so the goal is to get them early in the queue. After that, there’s gonna be vaccines shipped to some big pharmacy companies that will be addressing long-term care facilities, both providers and residents. And then there will be shipments coming to local health. And our role will be First Responders, teachers and other essential workers.”
What comes next is a more widespread distribution of the vaccine to smaller pharmacies in the spring—to the point, he said, where it will be as available as a conventional flu shot is now.
Bullough said he doesn’t know at this point just how much Summit County will receive.
“We don’t have a specific number yet, because the state is gonna receive X amount of doses, and then they’re gonna divvy it up by population. So what I can say is we’re not gonna get enough. We got a small population. There won’t be any county that’s gonna get enough for probably multiple shipments. But as you look at the delivery protocol, the numbers ramp up week by week. Our rough target, and I think this is probably realistic, is that somewhere, first part to middle part of the second quarter, lets say April, May—we’re gonna have relatively significant numbers of vaccines available to the general public.”
In the meantime, Bullough said that the county is still a long ways away from a “Moderate” status. They expect that the post-Thanksgiving surge of cases will be followed by a similar increase around Christmas. He urged citizens to do everything they can to make sure that friends and family are safe.
“I just encourage people, with as much passion as I possibly can over a radio, please be smart. Please protect your families. We’re seeing increased cases in individuals over 80. We believe that those are due to spread at Thanksgiving, during family gatherings. None of us want to be the individual that makes our grandparents or parents ill.”
Summit County Health Director Rich Bullough.
