BY NICOLE ASBURY
Roughly 17,000 individuals have received the first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine in Douglas County, according to data from Lawrence-Douglas County Public Health’s COVID-19 dashboard Friday.
Another nearly 5,000 individuals have received the second dose of the vaccine in the county.
Since the beginning of February, about 12,400 more people have received the first dose of the vaccine, according to data collected by the Eudora Times.
Data for vaccine distribution is hard to collect, because of how many agencies are involved, said Karrey Britt, a spokeswoman for Douglas County. Data is compiled from Lawrence-Douglas County Public Health, Haskell Indian Health Center, Heartland Community Health Center and LMH Health, and updated every Friday through the county health department’s dashboard.
A more complete breakdown shows that Douglas County has administered 6,063 first doses of Moderna’s vaccine, and 10,695 people have received Pfizer’s vaccine.
Douglas County is in Phase 2 of Kansas’ statewide vaccine distribution plan. Most recently, 2,094 people received their vaccine at a public clinic on Wednesday.
Two vaccine clinics are scheduled for next week on Wednesday and Friday at the Douglas County fairgrounds. It’s anticipated that roughly the same amount of vaccine doses will be administered as Wednesday’s clinic, Britt said Wednesday.
Lags in data have been a statewide issue, caused by reporting inconsistencies and time lags between Kansas’ immunization registry and the federal registry. Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly said in a news release Thursday there would be steps taken moving forward to clear up the vaccine data reporting issue.
The solutions include introducing a new daily reporting snapshot from vaccine providers and addressing technical issues between the registries.
“We want Kansans to have confidence that we are vaccinating at-risk Kansans as quickly as possible, and despite data lags, health care providers are administering all doses of vaccine to those who need them most,” Kelly said in a statement.
Qualifying Phase 2 Douglas County residents can fill out a COVID-19 vaccine interest form at dgcoks.org/vaccineinterestform. The form allows county health officials to contact interested individuals to schedule an appointment.
Individuals can confirm their form was recorded by visiting https://bit.ly/37t1uMY. The list of names is updated every weekday at 11 a.m.
Reach reporter Nicole Asbury at eudoratimes@gmail.com.
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