Clatsop County Ramps Up Vaccinations This Week

A Big Week in Clatsop County for Vaccinations.      Jacob Lewin.    

Clatsop County will be accelerating its Covid-19 vaccine effort this week and hopes to have 20% of county residents vaccinated by the end of the week.

As of last Friday, about 14% of Clatsop County residents had received first doses of a covid-19 vaccine. Vaccine task force incident commander Chris Laman hopes to reach 20% by this Friday.

“It will be by far our biggest week.”

Two-thousand shots is the target for the week, with two thirds of them to be administered at county-run clinics and the rest by a growing number of partners:

“We’re very excited that there are as of Monday, going to be four pharmacies in the county

Safeway Astoria, Safeway in Seaside, the Costco in Warrenton, and the Walmart in Warrenton that are giving doses of vaccine.”

County interim health director Margo Lalich says the effort is broadening:

“We’ve been very focused on individuals coming to our clinics to be vaccinated and now as more vaccine is coming into the community, we are starting to develop a strategy to vaccinate hard to reach populations.”

Some of those hard to reach groups—including house-bound and homeless people—will likely be getting the Johnson and Johnson vaccine since it only requires one dose and getting some people to come back for a second shot may be problematic. The county clinics will be aiming at somewhat younger people in the general population than in past weeks:

“We will be able to start offering the vaccine definitely to people in the 75 to 79 group but even some people in the 70 to 74 group, so it probably will be the upper people in that age group like 73 and 74 year olds.”

Again, that applies to the county run clinics. Partner groups have been offering shots to those sixty-five and over. On March 29^th, people 45 and over with an underlying condition, and front line workers, including employees of the fish processors, will become eligible for shots.