Vaccine for COVID set to come by end of month

While COVID-19 continues to rage through the area by causing yet another death in Steele County, Public Health Director Amy Caron delivered perhaps the best news in months on Monday.
Caron announced that the COVID-19 vaccine is expected to arrive in the area by the end of the month. However, it won’t be getting to the general population until at least early spring.
The first priority for those receiving vaccine, Caron said, will be health care workers, long-term care facility workers, paramedics and EMTs at ambulance services and Public Health workers. She expects the vaccine to “roll out quickly” to those workers. But, she added, it could take up to 10 weeks for them to get all of those workers vaccinated.
Not all details are known yet about the vaccine, but Caron said it looks like it will be a series of two shots 28 days apart.
“This is really encouraging that we are getting the first round of vaccine,” said Caron. “Vaccine is our No. 1 priority right now.”
Once the vaccine is available to the public, Caron expects her department to offer drive-thru clinics to get everyone vaccinated. The clinics would be similar to what Public Health offered earlier this fall for flu shots. “We had a lot of good comments about the drive-thru flu shot clinics,” Caron said. “The elderly people especially liked them because they didn’t have to get out of their vehicles and go into a building,” she added.
Members of Caron’s staff have made vaccine planning and distribution its top priority. She said her department will also continue doing trace investigations on new COVID cases that arise.
Caron said she hopes to release more details about vaccination within the next week so that people can start determining if it’s something they want to do.
The battle against the killer virus continues throughout the area. Steele County suffered yet another COVID-related death within the past week. It’s the sixth death in as many weeks. The county has experienced eight deaths since the pandemic began in March. The latest death was a man in his 60s, Caron said. Meanwhile, Dodge County experienced two deaths within the past week – the first in the county.
Steele County’s new cases were down this past week as 215 people tested positive. There have been 2,234 cases in the county with 26 people currently hospitalized. Some of those requiring hospitalization are in intensive care, though Caron did not have an exact number.
In Dodge County, there have been 990 cases with 15 people currently hospitalized. Freeborn County added three more deaths this past week, bringing that county’s total to nine deaths. There have been 1,692 cases in Freeborn County. Mower County has seen 2,886 cases with 23 deaths (no new ones in the past week).
One silver lining from the latest statistics this week is that Caron did not see any huge jumps in either Steele or Dodge counties from the Thanksgiving holiday. “Knock on wood, we haven’t seen a spike in cases. It’s encouraging that we didn’t have a spike due to Thanksgiving,” Caron said. “Possibly people abided by the (governor’s) executive order and didn’t get together in groups of people,” she added.
Within the next 10 days, Caron expects further direction from state leaders on what people should do for the Christmas and New Year’s holidays. The current executive order restricting bars and restaurants expires on Dec. 18. Caron said she wouldn’t be surprised to see that order extended out further.