Katie Lindstrom

PACIFIC COUNTY — At its peak, the vaccine waitlist for those currently eligible in Pacific County stood at more than 4,000 in early February. The number is now just in the hundreds as March begins, and local vaccine providers are on the hunt to make sure everyone who is currently eligible is given the opportunity to be vaccinated.

Vaccine providers in Pacific County received enough doses to administer about 1,000 first doses throughout the county this week, as well as all previously scheduled second-dose appointments. Providers are working to schedule first-dose appointments with those still remaining on the county waitlist, including those that providers have previously tried to contact to schedule an appointment with, but to no avail.

“Currently, including people we’ve tried to call but haven’t been able to reach, there’s maybe around 600 or 700 [people remaining on the waitlist]. And anyone we can reach this week who’s eligible, we should be able to have vaccine for,” said county health director Katie Lindstrom.

Lindstrom is urging those who are eligible and previously thought they signed up for the waitlist to do so again if they have not yet received a call to schedule an appointment. She said some people may have mistyped their phone number when filling out the waitlist form, may have installed an app or software that screens out their call as spam, or may have mistakenly believed they filled out the waitlist form when they were actually filling out the form to receive vaccine email updates from the county.

“What we’d like is for people to enter in a couple of different phone numbers, or maybe the phone number for a son or daughter or another contact, because we’re trying our hardest to reach everybody,” Lindstrom said.

Those currently eligible can sign up for the south county waitlist at https://tinyurl.com/y2p2n5kp.

As of Feb. 27, 8,021 vaccine doses have been given in Pacific County, or 35.7% of the county’s population. About 23% of county residents have received one vaccine dose, and another 6.5% have received two doses and are fully vaccinated. Statewide, 1,676,787 doses have been given, or 22% of the state’s population.

Ready for Johnson & Johnson vaccine

More good vaccine news arrived over the weekend, as the Food and Drug Administration approved an emergency use authorization for Johnson & Johnson’s covid-19 vaccine — the third vaccine to be approved in the United States, along with Pfizer and Moderna.

The vaccine had a 72% efficacy rate in its U.S. clinical trial, and showed 85% efficacy against severe forms of covid-19 and 100% efficacy against hospitalization and death across all of its trial sites. While not having an efficacy rate as high as Pfizer and Moderna, epidemiologists heralded the vaccine as another valuable, important tool in the fight against covid-19.

Several million initial doses are expected to be shipped out to states in the coming days and weeks. In a Feb. 25 news release, the Washington State Department of Health said the state was likely to be allocated more than 60,000 Johnson & Johnson doses this week. Vaccine providers submit requests for how much vaccine — and which vaccine, specifically — they would like to receive on a weekly basis.

Unlike the two previously approved vaccines, Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine calls for just a single shot, rather than two shots spaced several weeks apart. This, Lindstrom said, should work in local providers’ favor when it comes to vaccinating certain groups of people, such as homebound seniors, inmates and the homeless.

“We’re kind of thinking that we might prioritize — if we get Johnson & Johnson — we might use it on some of those groups,” Lindstrom said. “For homebound seniors, so we don’t have to go back for that second dose. The jail for obvious reasons, because if you get your first dose and you get released, it might be hard for us to find that person. And for homeless people the same thing, it might be harder to find them for that second dose.”

Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine is also much easier to store than the other two vaccines, which by and large require them to be kept frozen up until they are used. Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine can be stored at typical refrigeration temperatures for at least three months, a boon for rural and underserved communities that do not have necessary specialized equipment to store large amounts of vaccine.