Northern Illinois hospitals, nursing homes working out details of COVID-19 vaccination plan as arrival of first doses nears

McHenry County hospitals and nursing homes across the state are working out the details of who among their staffs and residents will be the first to receive a COVID-19 vaccine, as well as other crucial aspects about the rollout, when the first round of doses becomes available later this month.

Leaders of Northwestern Medicine and Mercyhealth, which both operate hospitals in the county, were unable to provide specific answers this week on whether staff members will be required to take a COVID-19 vaccine or other inquiries, including whether the county has ample cold storage space for Pfizer’s vaccine, which needs to be kept at temperatures well below zero degrees.

“Mercyhealth is still awaiting state and federal guidance as to when and who will receive the vaccine first once it arrives,” Mercyhealth spokeswoman Trish Reed said in an email, adding that the decision-making on the priority of vaccine recipients will be done by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“Mercyhealth is currently in the process of identifying which of our employee/partners meet the CDC definition of health care personnel eligible for [the] vaccine. While things look promising, it is important to know there are several steps to move through before a vaccine is available to the public.”

Dr. William Parker, who is a clinical ethicist and pulmonologist with the University of Chicago Department of Public Health Sciences, said he believes the range of hospital workers eligible for the vaccine initially will be quite broad and will include those working with COVID-19 patients as well as other medical staff.

As of Thursday, his hospital system also still was in the process of sorting out who within its ranks will be first in line, but he said he is confident that the distribution process will be equitable, secure and safe.

Parker, who has analyzed the data on both the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, said nothing so far indicates that anyone, including hospital systems or other facilities, should hold out to take one vaccine over the other.

That is because there are no concerns that either vaccine could trigger allergies since neither uses egg in its development, according to Parker and news reports. The vaccines work by delivering messenger RNA into a person’s cells, providing genetic instructions that force cells to produce the “spike” protein that COVID-19 uses to bind with and enter cells.

“The vaccines have very similar technology and side effects profiles,” Parker said, adding that how rapid each has been developed is a historic scientific feat. “In general, people probably will not have a choice [between the two] when the vaccine is absolutely scarce at the beginning of distribution.”

Even once the first round of inoculations has been completed, Illinois residents will need to continue socially distancing, wearing masks and avoiding gatherings with people from outside their households, potentially for months into next year, said Jackie Lanier, an associate professor at Illinois State University who is an expert on vaccines.

That’s because it likely will take months – perhaps well into next year – to achieve about a 70% rate of herd immunity to COVID-19, Lanier said, partially because of the fact that both the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines require two shots to achieve their full efficacy. The doses for each vaccine have to be taken several weeks apart, and then it takes several weeks after the second shot for the full effect of the vaccine to be realized, she said.

Plus, big questions remain about how long the vaccines will prevent infection, Lanier said.

“We don’t know yet the duration of the vaccine protection,” she said. “We won’t know until almost a year from now. That’s why studies will continue.”

Vaccination rates quickly will become a closely watched metric of the pandemic and will be an important factor when state officials begin considering loosening mitigations on businesses and limits on gatherings meant to slow the spread of the virus, Lanier said.

“Right now, we’re looking at the positivity rates, we’re looking at hospitalizations. Vaccination rates, we’re going to look at those. Is community spread going down as vaccinations go up? All those markers become another piece of this,” Lanier said. “That’s when we’ll start to be able to again think about loosening some of those restrictions.”

Like the local hospital systems, nursing homes and other long-term care facilities still are in the dark and working through some aspects of the initial distribution of the Pfizer vaccine, said a spokeswoman for the Health Care Council of Illinois, which represents about 300 long-term care facilities in the state.

It is unknown whether nursing homes will receive enough vaccines over the next month to allow more visitations at facilities that have prohibited or reduced outside visitors during the pandemic.

But so far, Illinois nursing homes have been asked to register for the programs that will be run by Walgreens and CVS that will work to distribute vaccine doses to residents in those facilities, Health Care Council of Illinois Director Pat Comstock said through a spokeswoman.

Illinois has 654,598 front-line health care workers and 109,227 long-term care facility residents, the two groups that will be prioritized in receiving doses of the initially available vaccine, Gov. JB Pritzker said a news conference Friday.