McHenry County Department of Health prepares for COVID-19 vaccine rollout

A COVID-19 vaccine rollout will be complex, local health officials said, although plans are in place at the McHenry County Department of Health to distribute it to prioritized groups as quickly as possible when it’s available in the area.

A U.S. government advisory panel for the Food and Drug Administration endorsed Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine for widespread use Thursday, The Associated Press reported. A final FDA decision is expected within days.

It’s hard to say, however, when the first doses of the vaccine could arrive in McHenry County, Susan Karras, McHenry County health department’s public health nursing director, said Thursday in an interview with the Northwest Herald.

McHenry County isn’t among the 50 counties Gov. JB Pritzker said would get the first vaccine first. The counties selected – which include Kane, DuPage, Will, Ogle and Jo Daviess in northern Illinois – had the state’s highest death rates per capita.

“We’re planning on and anticipating for that rollout to soon come following that first one,” Karras said, adding, “The rollout is going to be complicated because we don’t know the allotments that are going to be received.”

Each local health department is ready, after planning for months, to get doses out as quickly as possible, Karras said, although every county will handle the rollout differently. One county could receive a lot more doses because of its size and mortality rate, for example, and therefore have to respond differently than a county that receives fewer.

“Our plans are designed for our county, and how we can best deliver it,” Karras said.

The upcoming distribution effort will be one of the first times in decades where the U.S. has engaged in a in a mass vaccination effort, said Dr. Shoeb Sitafalwalla, chief medical officer for Advocate Good Shepherd Hospital in Barrington.

“This is really [about] trying to find a way to vaccinate every willing man, woman and eventually child, once approval comes, to partake in this to really quell the pandemic,” Sitafalwalla said.

The McHenry County health department has been working on plans for distributing a vaccine since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the plans have been tweaked as the department learned more about the virus.

Even before the pandemic, the county was required to have a mass vaccination plan, Karras said.

COVID-19 is a different scenario than the H1N1, or swine flu, mass vaccination that had previously been planned for. Back then, people weren’t wearing masks and didn’t have to social distance, Karras said.

For COVID-19, the McHenry County health department has agreements with places it calls “closed points of dispensing,” such as long-term care facilities it can deliver the vaccine to. The long-term care facility employees would then deliver the vaccine to their own clients and staff.

The McHenry County health department also has agreements with places considered “open points of dispensing,” such as schools in the county with gymnasiums and infrastructure that can accommodate a large volume of people.

Two locations, the McHenry County Fairgrounds in Woodstock and the Algonquin Public Works Facility, have been secured so far as mass vaccination drive-thru sites in McHenry County, and the McHenry County health department is working on getting a third. People would not even have to get out of their cars at the drive-thru clinics, Karras said.

The McHenry County health department will have an online registration process so that it can control how many people are coming into these vaccination sites at a specific time, so they can adequately space them out.

Both the Illinois Department of Public Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have a priority list for who will get the vaccine first, although within those prioritization groups, there is some wiggle room, Karras said.

Health care workers, including physicians and paramedics, and long-term care facility staff and residents are at the top of the list.

Once those populations are vaccinated, the McHenry County health department moves onto central front-line workers, such as law enforcement, other fire department staff, educators and those within the food and agriculture sector.

Then comes adults with high-risk medical conditions that put them at a higher risk for complications from COVID-19.

Residents of nursing homes are at a higher risk than those of a similar age or who have similar conditions living at home because of the congregate living setting, which is why the people there get the vaccines first, Karras said.

Agreements are place between the state and federal government and Walgreen’s and CVS to provide the vaccine to long-term care facilities.

If the long-term care facility chooses not to go this route, they will work with their local health department to get the vaccine.

Karras said the McHenry County health department will give the hospitals doses of the vaccine and it will be up to the hospitals on how to provide them to their staff, Karras said.

When it comes to health care workers, Sitafalwalla said, Advocate Good Shepherd is trying to do some internal prioritization.

Health care workers who have the most frequent, and greatest length of exposure, to COVID-19 patients, will be focused on first, Sitafalwalla said. This typically involves emergency room teams, intensive care unit staff, and respiratory therapists.

As well as preparing to distribute the vaccine, McHenry County health department is gearing up to push out information on it through social media, its website and news releases.

“We’ve been developing and creating vaccines for years,” Karras said. “There’s very strict rules and regulations in the studies that go into the development of these vaccines.”

Messaging surrounding the vaccine is something Sitafalwalla is thinking about himself.

“I think it’s about making trusted partners,” he said. “A physician, or CMO like myself, expressing a message has one level of impact, but doing that in concert, or in combination with a church pastor, has a completely different effect.”

People may need to hear information about the vaccine in their own language or in the context of their culture, Sitafalwalla said.

“As an organization, we have to respect that and understand that and take the time and humility to really dive deep,” he said.

Right now, the McHenry County health department is asking the public to be patient and go to reputable sources, such as the IDPH, CDC and the McHenry County Department of Health’s website, for information.

“I know everybody wants this to be over; believe me, I want it to be as well,” Karras said. “We’re asking for understanding about the difficult decisions that we may be faced with, with the allotments that we receive here in our county.”

For Sitafalwalla, news of a vaccine is a “much needed light” at the end of the tunnel, especially with the burnout, fatigue and emotional strain medical professionals have been facing.

“They’ve really poured their heart and soul into our community,” he said. “It’s been a long road.”