Local hospitals to reach vaccination goals

PLATTSBURGH | A day after Gov. Andrew Cuomo suggested hospitals in New York State would face fines if they did not use their supply of the Coronavirus COVID-19 vaccination by the end of the week, a local health expert stated North Country hospitals were on point to use their entire supply. "Our hospitals are firmly in the use it column," said Dr. Wouter Rietsema, vice president of population health and information services at the University of Vermont Health Network/Champlain Valley Physicians Hospital (CVPH) in a Jan. 5 press conference updating the vaccination rollout. Locally, Rietsema said Elizabethtown Community Hospital, also part of the UVM Health Network, had used 83 percent of vaccine inventory and would have the rest distributed by Thursday. CVPH is scheduled to perform between 300-5000 vaccinations in the coming two days to distribute their supply, while Alice Hyde in Malone was already out of stock, partially due to a shipment that was not received. "We do not have the numbers from Adirondack Health but from what I have heard they are in the same situation we are in," Rietsema said. "We are all trying to meet our global desire to get as many people vaccinated as we have doses to do it. This is a massive project not just for health care and hospitals but for the general public. There has never been such a broad vaccination program planned or executed. We are flying the plane as we build it and that is true at the federal level, at the state level, at the local level, and at the hospital level." Moving ahead Rietsema said doses will continue to come to the local hospitals top vaccinate those in Tier 1A of the vaccination schedule but does not have specifics on when they will arrive "We get about 3-4 days notices with the Pfizer vaccine and (Moderna) is literally dropped into our laps." Currently, Reitsema said that about 1,500 staff members at CVPH have received the first of two vaccination doses, while the hospital will start to move deeper into its 1,000 additional staff members as other segments of Tier 1A start to be vaccinated next week. Care facilities Long term care facilities do not get their vaccines through a hospital, said Rietsema, but through local pharmacies that have been contracted by the federal government. In the North Country, those include CVS, Walgreen's, and Kinney's Health Direct program. "The Alice Center in Malone was vaccinated before Christmas," said Rietsema. "Meadowbrook got done that week. Our small facility at CVPH has not been vaccinated yet, so it is variable when places get their shots." Transition to health department distribution Rietsema said he felt those frontline workers and others who are apart of Tier 1B in the vaccination schedule would start to get shots "within the next week or so," with local count health departments taking the lead. "Once we move out of tier 1A we anticipate that health departments will be taking the lead and we know that they will need help from us and they will also need help from within the community," he said. "It will be very good to start the process of tier 1B." Once the rollout starts to take shape in local communities, finding qualified workers to help with vaccinating will be key. "The biggest problem will be staffing," said Rietsema. "Vaccinations take people. It is the single most important step. I think we will get to a point where the volume of vaccine we have will not be the prohibiting factor and it will be staff." Happy vaccine is here Rietsema added every vaccine that gets in an arm benefits everybody because it becomes a break in the transmission chain."Every morning I walk through our vaccination clinic because I get to see happy vaccinators and happy people getting the vaccine," he said. He added the hospitals have been able to get the vaccine into arms and have done so without losing any doses to exposure or other means. "We have not wasted any vaccines - not a single dose."

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Local hospitals to reach vaccination goals

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