BY NICOLE ASBURY
Health officials expect to begin vaccinating roughly 3,000 Douglas County residents per week and possibly more as vaccine supplies become available.
Douglas County’s Unified Command Center approved health officials’ COVID-19 vaccine distribution plan for Phase 2, which would lead to an increase in the number of county residents receiving a dose each week.
Under Phase 2, senior citizens and essential workers qualify to receive the vaccine. This includes teachers, child care workers, first responders, grocery store employees and food service workers. Douglas County health officials estimate roughly 30,000 to 40,000 people are included in this phase of the vaccine distribution plan.
Earlier Tuesday, the federal government notified states that vaccine supply would increase next week.
While local health officials estimated Tuesday that about 3,000 people will receive the vaccine each week, they also said that if more vaccine supplies are available in the future, it could triple the amount.
Doses are still limited in supply, said Dan Partridge, director of Lawrence-Douglas County Public Health, in a statement.
“Given that everyone in Phase 2 is considered critical and a priority, each group will receive an allocation of doses every week,” Partridge said. “We understand that this means not every group will receive a large allocation with the current scarcity of vaccine, but this approach allows us to move through Phase 2 together.”
Kansas receives roughly 45,000 doses of the coronavirus vaccine each week, Kansas Department of Health and Environment Secretary Lee Norman said during a briefing with state lawmakers Tuesday. Since Kansas is 1% of the United States population, the vaccine doses it receives are 1% of the national supply.
“We’re on what I would call a steady cadence with Operation Warp Speed, who is the one dispensing the vaccine,” Norman said.
Operation Warp Speed is a plan by multiple federal agencies to help accelerate the production of COVID-19 vaccines.
Norman said as Phase 2 unfolds further, individuals will be able to schedule receiving a vaccine with their local provider; those providers will “increase dramatically” in the coming months.
More pharmacies, community medical groups, hospitals and other locations will begin opening up as vaccination sites.
United Methodist Ministries is also working with individual communities to have Methodist churches serve as potential vaccination sites, Norman said.
As of Tuesday evening, Eudora’s United Methodist Church Rev. Ross Baker was not aware of plans to make the local church a vaccination site, but said that given the property’s location, it would be happy to aid in the process of vaccination.
“It would be very easy to accommodate a thing such as that,” Baker said. “I think our church leadership would be very willing to serve such purposes if we are called to do so.”
Norman said Kansas officials are working on putting together a website that helps people find their nearest location to receive a vaccine, once it’s available.
Douglas County health officials made a similar form where residents can complete a vaccine interest survey at dgcoks.org/vaccineinterestform. The survey allows Douglas County residents to indicate their interest in receiving the vaccine and how they want to be notified once the vaccine is available.
Reach reporter Nicole Asbury at eudoratimes@gmail.com.
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