Officials: More Will County vaccine sites will depend on increasing supply

While vaccinating older residents and essential workers is underway in Will County, officials say they won’t be able to add many more sites to get shots until supplies increases.

As of Wednesday, about 15,200 people in Will County, or just over 2% of the total population, have been fully vaccinated, according to the Illinois Department of Public Health. In total around 57,100 vaccines have been administered in the county.

Several factors have complicated the rollout, according to Cindy Jackson, the county health department’s director of mass vaccinations, but the key is a lack of vaccines.

“We have plenty of offers for facilities (to help administer shots),” Jackson said. “Right now we have an immediate vaccine inventory issue. We are getting very small amounts of vaccine every week.”

The county said in a news release this week that the local health department is receiving “scant,” incremental shipments of about 2,000 doses at a time. Officials said that supply chain makes vaccinating most of the county’s nearly 700,000 residents a “great challenge.”

Some residents have pointed to Cook County’s mass vaccination site at the Tinley Park Convention Center and asked if Will County will host a similarly large operation.

Sue Olenek, the executive director of the county health department, said her department has about 30 partner providers to administer shots.

The Will County Health Department has been vaccinating about 260 residents a day at its facility in Joliet. Other pharmacies and hospitals have been administering shots and various entities have been helping to vaccinate teachers in Joliet, Valley View and Lincoln-Way school districts. The vaccine site at Joliet West High School, staffed by AMITA Health and the Joliet Fire Department, will soon be able to vaccinate residents age 65 and over.

During a Facebook Live panel discussion, Judy Mitchell, the president of Joliet Junior College, said JJC has agreed to host mass vaccinations when supplies are adequate.

The Will County Emergency Management Agency has worked behind the scenes on the logistics of securing vaccination sites. Allison Anderson, the deputy director of the Will County EMA, said the county hopes to have at least 40 different locations for residents to get vaccinated.

“Every time one more provider comes online, it’s closer to somebody’s home or work,” Anderson said. “It also takes a lot of pressure off the (county) health department.”

But Olenek said during a Will County Board of Health meeting Wednesday that vetting potential sites takes time.

In addition, only a handful of existing providers are even able to properly store the Pfizer vaccine, which requires extremely cold temperatures.

Olenek added the state’s changing policies have only put more pressure on county health departments to adjust.

For instance, Gov. JB Pritzker announced Wednesday the state will expand the eligible list of people who can receive a shot. Later this month, people over the age of 16 with certain high-risk medical conditions will be able to get a vaccine sooner than originally planned.

Olenek said her team hasn’t receive much warning prior to such policy changes before they were announced.

“It’s actually getting pretty messy,” she said during Wednesday’s meeting about the need to adjust to these changes.

Pritzker cited an increasing supply from the federal government as the cause of the change, but Will County health officials said it takes time for those supply enhancements to reach localities.

Jackson said two weeks ago, the county requested extra vaccines from the state to transfer to its partner providers but did not receive any.

“We request what we need,” she said. “They give us what they can give us and it’s never what we need.”

Officials insist even if they have the sites and volunteers at the ready, it’s little use without enough vaccine to meet the high demand.

“We just really need to get the extra vaccines,” Anderson said. “We are starting to see the supply chain open up. Hopefully those two lines of supply and demand can start to even out in the future.”

For more information, visit willcountyhealth.org.