Health workers stuck on snowy highway give COVID vaccines to motorists

JOSEPHINE COUNTY, Oregon – When a group of health workers with COVID-19 vaccines on hand got stranded on a snowy Oregon highway, they improvised to make sure doses didn’t go to waste not.

Josephine County Public Health said about 20 of her staff and volunteers had just completed a mass immunization event at a local high school and were on their way to administer the six remaining vaccines at Grants Pass when the snowstorm hit Highway 199 near Hayes Hill.

The snow would prevent staff from delivering these doses to intended recipients, so they set up an “impromptu clinic” with an ambulance on hand for safety reasons.

Not wanting the doses to expire, the health department said its staff have started walking from car to car, offering stranded motorists a chance to receive a COVID-19 vaccine.

In the end, officials said all six doses were given, including one to an employee of the Josephine County Sheriff’s Office who arrived too late for the high school clinic, but ended up stopping with it. the others on the way back to Grants Pass.

The health department said its director, Mike Weber, called the situation “one of the coolest surgeries he’s been involved in.”