Provo hospital attempts to distribute 1,900 doses of COVID-19 vaccine by Friday

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Doses of the Pfizer vaccine will not be wasted, a spokeswoman for the Utah County Department of Health said.

(Courtesy University of Utah Health) A vial of the Pfizer / BioNTech version of the COVID-19 vaccine.

| February 11, 2021 at 11:56 pm

| Update: February 12, 2021 at 1:11 a.m.

A Provo hospital has around 1,900 doses of the COVID-19 vaccine it needs to get into people’s arms, stat.

Officials at Utah Valley’s Provo Hospital have let neighboring counties know that if there are people 70 or older who can get to Provo by Friday afternoon, an injection of the Pfizer vaccine is available to them.
People can register for an appointment by going to the Utah County Department of Health website: https://healthevents.utahcounty.gov/.
Lance Madigan, spokesperson for Intermountain Healthcare, said the hospital has scheduled appointment blocks for residents of Utah County to get the vaccines, but many time slots are not filled. .

“We don’t know if everyone who wants it has figured it out already, or if it’s a technological issue – because it’s [people] 70 years and over and we ask people to register [online] before they come, ”Madigan said.

Aislynn Tolman-Hill, spokesperson for the Utah County Department of Health, said her agency had noticed a drop in the number of appointments for the vaccine over the past week. “In fact, we’re starting to see, maybe, that we’re coming to the end of the 70-plus crowd that we’re trying to get vaccinated,” she said.

Utah County, Tolman-Hill said, also has its share of “vaccine hesitation” – people want to “see what’s going on, how everyone’s going” before they get vaccinated. themselves.

Nicholas Rupp, spokesperson for the Salt Lake County Health Department, said his office was made aware of the available doses on Thursday. The Salt Lake County agency has started calling people on its waiting lists for vaccines, asking if any of them can come to Provo and get the shot.

Staff at the Provo hospital, Madigan said, were working to “prepare sufficiently to meet the demand as it arose, to minimize waste as much as possible.” … We will develop a process. These will not be discarded. “

“They don’t take the doses out of the freezer unless they know they’ve talked about those dates before,” Tolman-Hill said.

Pfizer vaccine should be stored at extremely cold temperatures, and pharmacists usually do not thaw vials until they know the vaccine will be used.

Rupp said officials at his agency discussed transferring doses of Provo to a vaccination site in Salt Lake County. They opted against the move, said Rupp, “because we’re already at full capacity with whom we have staff, and everything that we have. [Friday and Saturday] on our current sites. “

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