By DAVID DUPONT
BG Independent News
The Wood County Health Board heard of about $1 million in assistance coming to the department to assist with efforts to combat the coronavirus. The funds show up as the county continues its push to vaccinate as many people as possible as the number of cases continue to rise.
Finance Director Tracy Henderly reported that the department had received a notice of award for $769,000 in federal funding to assist with a wide range of vaccination related expenses over the next two years. More paperwork has to be completed before the funds can be used.
This comes on top of $108,000 aimed at equity-based vaccination efforts and the original $80,000 in relief funds. Also, Health Director Ben Robison reported that the county is eligible to tap a pool of FEMA funds available for the next 90 days.
The different sources each have their own focus and limitations. The FEMA funds, for example, can be used for meals for volunteers. So it’s a matter of determining what funds are best spent to cover what expenses.
This should, he indicated, mean that the department will not have to tap into its levy funds. Robison said he will be returning to the board with plans of how the department will emerge from the pandemic.
At Thursday night’s meeting, the board voted to hire 20 contract workers to help with vaccination clinics. These workers will be paid $300 for initial training and then $100 for each event they staff.
The only question raised was over the hiring of Frank McLaughlin, a former member of the board and retired director of the county’s Child Support Agency. Robison assured the board that even though they all know McLaughlin, he is not a close relative nor does he have a financial ties to them, so voting to hire him does not constitute a conflict of interest.
McLaughlin was one of several other of the hires who has been volunteering at clinics. Robison said when hiring for the positions, the department first reached out to its volunteer pool.
Robison said the department has also contracted with 30 nurses.
This comes as the county’s vaccination efforts enter a new phase. At first the county was focused on distributing its limited supplies of vaccines to the most vulnerable population, the elderly. Now more than 80-percent of that population has been vaccinated.
With the amount of vaccines increasing, the effort is turning to increasing the demand for them.
The department is reaching out with promotions effort, including public service announcements from local residents about why they got vaccinated.
Wood County ranks third in the state for its vaccination rate, trailing only Ottawa and Delaware counties. So far it has administered 20,000 doses.
Now the department is working with employers to find new places to hold clinics and studying what times are most in demand.
Also, Robison said in the next week or so there will be an announcement about partnerships with schools to push to get those 16-18 vaccinated.
Efforts to get university students vaccinated will be affected by the reduction in the Johnson & Johnson vaccine being distributed. The decline comes in the wake of the loss of 15 million doses because of an error at a Baltimore manufacturing plant.
That news, he said, is “discouraging,” especially since the Johnson & Johnson vaccine requires only one shot. At this point, students who receive the Pfizer or Moderna two-shot vaccines will have left campus when the second shot is due to be administered.
Still, Robison said, they could get the second dose somewhere else, or start the regimen when they get home.
There is plenty of the other vaccines, he noted.
The county is experiencing an increase in cases. While a few weeks ago the rate had dipped to 120 cases per 100,000 people, it has now risen to 200 cases per 100,000. Gov. Mike DeWine has set 50 cases per 100,000 as the point at which many pandemic restrictions could be removed.
Though the county is not sequencing every positive tests, three cases of variants have been detected in the county.
As noted by board member Bob Midden, this is a race between vaccination and the spread of variants. If there are not enough hosts for the virus, the variants cannot take hold.
While initially the idea was to protect the most vulnerable individuals, now it is a matter of getting community-wide protection, Robison said.
