EATON — Preble County’s Health Commissioner says so far, the agency has been able to take every dose of COVID-19 vaccine the state has shipped to Eaton and turn them into shots in arms within a week of getting each new shipment.
Erik Balster is the Health Commissioner with Preble County Public Health. He told News Center 7 Tuesday afternoon that, so far, his agency is the only COVID vaccine provider in the county.
Over the last month, the State of Ohio has increased the number of COVID vaccine doses it has shipped to Preble County. “Initially, we were getting 100 doses a week for the first three weeks for our Phase 1A and then last week, we got approximately 500 doses,” Balster said. “And this week we’re expecting 500 more doses for our Phase 1B individuals. So 80 and up from last week and 75 and up this week.”
Balster said the state is now delivering Pfizer and Moderna vaccine doses to Preble County Public Health, whereas the agency was only getting Moderna’s version of the shot when the state first started vaccine shipments.
Preble County Public Health says demand for COVID vaccines has been high in the county. “There’s been a really high demand,” Balster said. “The term ‘phones ringing off the hook’ is one of those clichés you hear, but our phones literally rang non-stop from the announcement of the vaccine being available for those individuals 80 and up two Thursdays ago and all through the weekend and we got back to work Monday and we had well over 200 voicemails on top of all the messages we received through online resources as well,” Balster said. “So the demand has been quite high. And it’s been quite a task to keep up with all that and try to get everyone in line or a spot or a reservation or pre-registration to get vaccinated so far.”
Balster says his agency has created a web site for people to sign up for an appointment to get a vaccine when they’re eligible at https://vaccinatepreble.com/.
But, he says, supply from the state can sometimes be moving target, so they only post available appointments when they know exactly how many vaccine doses they’re getting each week.
“We’ve gotten different doses, amounts of vaccine and we don’t really know until even up to maybe a day before how much vaccine we’ll get,” Balster said. “So we don’t want to be in a position where we’re establishing clinics and we may not have vaccine so only when we’re sure we’re getting vaccine will we put spots available for people so we’re not wasting people’s time. The last thing we want to do is have people come to a clinic and be disappointed that they weren’t able to get a vaccine.”
Right now, Preble County Public Health is only operating one vaccine distribution clinic at the Eagles Point building in Eaton. But, Balster says that could change if vaccine supply catches up to the high demand. “In the event we were to get significantly larger amounts of vaccine, we would open up more clinics and we would make that available to the public,” Balster said “It’s one of those things that if supply could meet up to demand, we will be out there giving shots.”
Cox Media Group
