Health leaders get vaccine 'marching orders'

A lot is still being determined about distribution and availability of the COVID-19 vaccine, but local health leaders have been given "marching orders" to get ready more or less imminently. Hancock County Health Commissioner Karim Baroudi said he anticipates that the community will receive the vaccine "as soon as it becomes available" and a task force including both his office and Blanchard Valley Health System has been meeting to prepare to distribute it. Baroudi spoke with The Courier on Wednesday, a day before a U.S. Food and Drug Administration advisory panel voted to recommend emergency authorization of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. Dr. Bill Kose, vice president of special projects for the health system, said Blanchard Valley Hospital does not expect to receive vaccine doses in the very first batch, which may be available within a few days. The hospital is expected to be first to receive doses when they arrive in Hancock County, however. The vaccine will first be made available to health care providers at hospitals, and Blanchard Valley Hospital will be responsible for administering its own vaccines, Baroudi said. Long-term care facilities will follow, and then local health departments like Hancock Public Health will get doses to administer to EMS personnel. Also in the first category of people eligible to get vaccinated, under state guidelines, are residents and staff of Ohio's veterans homes; patients and staff at psychiatric hospitals; people with intellectual disabilities or mental illness who are in group homes or centers, and staff at those locations; and other health care providers and personnel "routinely involved with the care of COVID-19 patients." The decision as to which groups can get vaccinated first was made by Gov. Mike DeWine, based on guidance from federal leaders, Baroudi said. It isn't a local decision, but there's a lot of local work going into determining how to get the shots distributed. As there is a limited supply of doses available, Baroudi said the first ones to arrive in our community will go to the hospital. But, he said, the hope is that a second batch will be a week or so behind the first, and more will keep coming. Baroudi said a lot of this is up in the air, but his department's "marching orders" from their state and federal counterparts is that they should be ready. His office anticipates receiving its first doses in late December. Baroudi said there will be a statewide registry to get vaccinated, but it will be managed locally. Since the vaccine consists of two doses, Baroudi's team will also be responsible for making sure that people come back for the second dose 21 days after the first. A fact sheet by the Ohio Department of Health notes that Ohioans who receive a first dose of a vaccine must then receive a second dose from the same manufacturer, as there are multiple vaccines being developed. Baroudi said the health department is working on the logistics to keep the vaccine cold. Kose said there isn't a place available in Hancock County to store the Pfizer vaccine at minus 70 degrees Celsius, which is required. Baroudi said this is true, but the vaccine doses will come shipped in special containers, and Hancock Public Health has been in contact with dry ice suppliers. His understanding is that having a supply of dry ice may be sufficient, without special equipment being required. NPR reported in November that Pfizer "has designed its own packaging to keep doses super cold with dry ice, so that they can be stored for a few weeks without specialized freezers (the packaging has been informally nicknamed 'the pizza box')." The special packaging used in clinical trial operations has a northwest Ohio connection: Ohio Northern University in November published a piece on its website about alumna Donna Christopher, who is global vice president of operations for Almac Clinical Services, a division of the Almac Group. Almac worked with BioNTech and Pfizer on their COVID-19 vaccine clinical trial beginning in June, providing the supply chain support necessary to get the vaccine to approximately 30,000 patients at 120 phase III trial sites in six countries across the globe, ONU reported. They developed a shipper known as the Almac Pod, which can hold temperatures as low as minus 90 degrees. "Things are definitely getting colder in the pharmaceutical industry," Christopher told ONU. Baroudi stressed that the vaccine is not mandated, and people can choose not to get vaccinated. But, he said, to reach herd immunity — meaning that a majority of the population is immune to the virus — requires that about 50,000 Hancock County residents do get vaccinated. The more people who do, the better off we will be as a community, he said, adding "this is our way out" of the pandemic. And Baroudi stressed that the vaccine "went through rigorous trials" — and the hearing Thursday involved a review by a panel of scientists. Kose said hospital staff have been working to educate medical staff, so they can educate the public on the vaccine. Kose said the biggest question people have is safety. And Kose feels the vaccine is "extremely safe." Baroudi said the vaccine itself is expected to be free, as the federal government has purchased it for American citizens. There is an administration fee, which will be billed to insurance, including Medicare and Medicaid, he said.