Dickinson Co. Public Health, LRH, Beginning To Make Preparations For COVID-19 Vaccination Clinics

(Spirit Lake)– There’s no word yet as to when COVID-19 vaccine will arrive locally, but officials with Dickinson County Public Health and Lakes Regional Healthcare are starting to do some planning. Jason Harrington, President and CEO of Lakes Regional Healthcare, says one of the things they’re deciding on right now is whether or not to have a walk-in or driven through vaccination clinic. He says they’re leaning toward a drive through facility and are looking for possible locations…Harrington01 (1) 

“In order to do that we are really looking for a building, a large building, that, I’m thinking of kind of a large farm building that has an opening on one end and an opening at the other end that would allow vehicles to drive completely through. Ideally we would like, we could bring heat in to the building if there’s not heat. You know we’re willing to lease a building like that from someone for a period of time. We’d maintain all of the liability insurance and otherwise. Ideally, Steve, it would be on a hard surface road as opposed to somewhere out in the country. Something off hopefully a main highway as to not, you know, create, clog up traffic and or long lines of traffic waiting to access the building.”

Anyone who may be willing to lease such a facility to Lakes Regional Healthcare should contact Harrington at 712-336-8795.

Harrington says they’re working on some other challenges as well. For one thing, the vaccine from Pfizer needs to be stored at an extremely cold temperature…Harrington02 (1) 

“We do have within Lakes Regional Healthcare a freezer that will reach that level, but, you know, wouldn’t hold a significant of vaccine but enough for us to do vaccine clinics. You can also create level of temperature by dry ice but, you know, as true with all ice that, you know, will deteriorate over time. So there’s really a limited period of time in those types of vaccines for which you can give them. So that’s why we’re really trying to be thoughtful about the best way to give the largest number of vaccines in the shortest amount of time that we can both because of the shelf life of the vaccine and just the desire to get it out.”

Harrington says based on what they’re currently hearing from the CDC, the vaccine will be administered in phases with healthcare providers being among the first to receive it, followed by nursing home residents. Additional priority groups would be next in line followed by the general public.

As far as the present day is concerned, Harrington says capacity and staffing is becoming more and more of an issue at area hospitals, including Lakes Regional Healthcare. He says they have been forced a couple of different times recently to postpone inpatient surgeries. But he says their biggest fear is if they would need to start sending patients elsewhere due to a shortage of beds…Harrington03 (1) 

“We’ll always be able to take care of a patient that shows up at our Emergency Room but we never as a community hospital want to be in a situation where we’ve sent you to the Emergency Room now you need an inpatient bed and there’s not one available so we’re going to take you to Le Mars, or we’re going to take you to Sioux Center or we’re going to take you wherever, you know, an available bed exists and so we never want to be in that situation but I can tell you we’re getting closer to that every day, certainly more so than any other time during the pandemic.”

Harrington says he would like to see additional mitigation measures put into place to help avoid that from happening, including universal masking.