Orange City, Iowa — Sioux County health officials report that their COVID vaccination effort received a welcome boost recently.
The Local Public Health Agency, Community Health Partners, tells us they are working collaboratively with the four area health systems and Promise Community Health Center to distribute and administer COVID-19 vaccine.
Recently they received notice that Sioux County was selected as 1 of the 17 counties eligible to receive an allocation of the new Johnson and Johnson vaccine for use in phase 1b, tier 2 populations which include workers in food, agriculture, distribution, and manufacturing sectors who live or work in settings that made social distancing difficult.
The Sioux County Emergency Preparedness Coalition held an emergency meeting to align efforts to administer the 900 doses of vaccine to eligible employees, in addition to the efforts underway targeting individuals 65 and older.
Community Health Partners and health system employees worked with major employers and gave most of the vaccinations on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday.
Kim Westerholm, Director of Community Health Services says that the collaborative effort between public health, emergency management, and all health care systems — and the willingness of staff to do whatever needs to get done during the pandemic has been “remarkable, and this is another illustration of that.”
The vaccines were given on-site at Agropur, Center Fresh, Formosa Foods, Perdue, Premium Iowa Pork, SIG, Smithfield Orange City, and Smithfield Sioux Center.
Westerholm says Sioux County is following the Iowa Department of Public Health orders for COVID-19 vaccine administration and is administering the vaccine to priority groups as it becomes available. She says Sioux County has now expanded vaccine priority groups to include Childcare and PK-12 Teachers and School Staff in addition to individuals age 65 and older.
If you are 65+ or a teacher or on staff at a PK-12 school, sign-up at your local health system or at Hy-Vee using links listed on www.siouxcovid.org.
She says that as more vaccine becomes available, the priority groups will continue to expand.
