While a lot of attention has been paid to mass vaccination sites in Washington’s metropolitan areas, and as someone who grew up in the middle of a wheat field, I wondered how the vaccine rollout was going for the more rural areas of Washington state?
The curiosity was sparked again after a conversation with a rural viewer named Jack Wednesday morning.
Jack lives in Lincoln County so I decided to head out to Davenport Wednesday afternoon to check in on their vaccine rollout.
With roughly 11,000 people spread out across Lincoln County (Washington’s 5th largest), and no mass vaccination sites like the one at the Spokane Arena to lean on, how does the county come together to get vaccines to their residents?
“That’s exactly the answer. We come together,” Lincoln County Public Health Administrator Ed Dzedzy told me. He actually told me twice as I initially interviewed him via phone before sporadically deciding to jump in the car and surprise him at his office while we were getting shots of beautiful downtown Davenport.
For Dzedzy, whether it’s a massive undertaking like COVID testing, case investigation or vaccine rollout, when you live in a rural county, collaboration is key.
Dzedzy says there are only three pharmacies in all of Lincoln County and none of them have the vaccine yet. So it’s up to the Health Department at the county’s two hospitals, one in Davenport and one in Odessa, to administer the vaccines.
The problem, however, like all counties across Washington, is a familiar one.
“It’s an issue of limited resources and huge demand and we’re all doing our best to try to work through that,” Dzedzy said.
With more than 1,000 people on the waiting in Lincoln County to receive a vaccine – a list that is growing every day – and somewhere between 100-200 doses a week coming in, Lincoln Hospital CEO Tyson Lacy told me through collaboration they are able to distribute the vaccine, they just don’t have enough.
“We’re not waiting on anything. We’re not sitting on a giant stockpile. It’s as soon as we get them we get them out,” Lacy said. “We just wish we had more vaccines and were able to meet the demand that people have.”
When mass vaccination sites opened up in Washington, places like Lincoln County saw their allocation drop, but the hope is that they will pick back up as more supply becomes available. As a result, there were no vaccinations happening in Lincoln County on Wednesday.
“The struggle for vaccine is everywhere. We’re receiving small doses and we’re doing the best we can to get it out. It’d be nice to receive a couple hundred more,” Dzedzy said. “If we had a few hundred more doses, we could be out vaccinating people but we’re not. We’re sitting around waiting for vaccine to show up.”
In the meantime, clinics are being used to collect names of people in the current priority groups so that when the vaccine arrives, those people get a phone call and hopefully an appointment scheduled.
On the drive to Davenport, I also spoke with Tri-County Health Administrator Matt Schanz who is involved with the vaccine rollout in the rural counties of Ferry, Stevens and Pend Oreille.
Schanz told me he’s experiencing similar obstacles to those faced in Lincoln County.
“From one week to the next, we don’t know what we’re going to get,” Schanz said. “The big gaps are there’s really not enough vaccine and the knowledge of what we’re going to get one week to the next.”
All vaccine providers put in their orders every week and Schanz told me the requests for doses far exceeds the amount that is available.
“Nobody’s getting everything they want, that’s for sure,” Schanz said. “We’re trying to do our best to go out into our smaller communities and offer vaccination clinics.”
Those clinics Schanz is referring to still require you meet current eligibility requirements and have an appointment. There was one being held in Suncrest Wednesday and another planned in Ione on Thursday. The benefit of those clinics is that health officials can get the vaccine to residents in rural areas while making sure no dose is wasted.
The vaccination rates based on population in Lincoln, Stevens, Pend Oreille and Ferry counties is in line with Spokane County at about 10 percent. Dzedzy told me roughly 1100 of Lincoln County’s 11,000 residents had been vaccinated and Schanz echoed similar numbers with 1160 vaccinated in Ferry County, 3472 in Stevens County and 2170 in Pend Oreille (all of those numbers as of January 30). Roughly 55,000 doses have been administered in Spokane County, according to the Department of Health.
In the meantime, as the supply works to catch up with the demand, the message to residents of all counties remains the same: Patience.
“We’re all struggling to work forward through this process as good as we can and fast as we can and we have to be patient and work through the process together,” Dzedzy concluded.
