BP nursing home expects vaccine by Dec. 28

The COVID-19 vaccine has been approved for emergency use by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and Steele County health care workers and elderly residents can soon receive the potentially life-saving immunization.
Joe Mason, administrator of Prairie Manor Care Center in Blooming Prairie, said Steele County Public Health will get the vaccine on Monday, Dec. 21, and the soonest they will vaccinate at local nursing homes is the following Monday, Dec. 28.
Even though that’s just a couple weeks away, he said the care center is prepared for the vaccine’s arrival.
“I think we're ready,” Mason said. “The consent forms [for our residents] are already in the mail. Once we have the consent forms signed, there's really nothing else for us to do because we won't be the ones administering the vaccine.”
He noted that the staff will be inoculated first by Steele County Public Health and then the care center’s pharmacy of choice, out of all the pharmacies approved to administer the vaccine, will vaccinate their residents. However, other facilities might do it differently.
If any staff or residents don’t want to take the vaccine, all they have to do is not sign the consent form.
Whether or not residents take the vaccine could cause a distinction in the amount of caution staff have to take when assisting residents who have taken the vaccine compared to those who haven’t, but Mason said that decision isn’t up to him.
“That depends on if the state or federal bodies decide if there can be a differentiation between the two. Until then, everyone will be treated the same,” he said.
One reason Mason and his staff want as many people as possible to take the vaccine is to keep the number of residents who test positive for COVID-19 as small as possible.
He said only a few staff members have tested positive for the virus from March to the end of October, but they did have two residents contract the virus in November.
Mason said the number of residents with COVID-19 hasn’t increased beyond those two, but if it does, changes to the care center’s visitation policy may occur.
“If we keep getting more positive COVID-19 cases, I may have to be stricter with how many outsiders we allow,” he said.
He said that if more residents fall ill with the virus, one possible move would be to have residents select only two people who can visit them, which would be a stark contrast to the unlimited number of outsiders that can visit them now.
In terms of when that move might happen, he said there is no benchmark, such as five residents contracting COVID-19, for when a move to reduced visitors should happen.
“It’s truly up to the individual facility,” said Mason.
However, until an escalation in the number of residents who test positive for COVID-19 occurs, the number of people who can visit them will remain unlimited.