A state-run pop-up COVID vaccine site is coming to Warsaw next week.
Warsaw Mayor Joe Thallemer said during his biweekly coronavirus press conference Wednesday the vaccine site will be at the Center Lake Pavilion Tuesday to April 24, offering first-round Pfizer shots from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m.
Appointments can be made online, and a second site will open again May 10 to 15 for the second Pfizer shot. Plans are for 400 shots to be administered a day, for a total of 2,000 during the five-day period, Thallemer said.
A push to reach more people, including individuals who speak Spanish, will be hitting the neighborhoods today, Thallemer said, in the form of brochures being distributed by the fire department and local volunteers. The city did this same kind of outreach when the pandemic began to encourage testing and provide education.
On another note, Kosciusko County Health Officer Dr. William Remington said Wednesday a privately scheduled Johnson & Johnson vaccine clinic set for this Saturday was cancelled.
Remington said the shots were offered to at-risk groups, and the state and health officials are working with those individuals to reschedule appointments. The 400 doses of the J&J vaccine are being stored at the Kosciusko County Health Department until a directive comes about what to do with them.
There is a bright side to the vaccines, however. According to KCHD Communicable Disease Nurse Teresa Reed, there was no major spike in local cases after spring break.
“I’m pretty pleased with the numbers,” she said. “There have been some raises, but last week’s number show we were at 108 cases compared to 106 the week before, so we don’t want to stop paying attention, but I really dig those numbers.”
Reed said she’s also been keeping an eye on the effects of the change in the mask mandate. She’s not concerned with what’s she’s seen so far, she said.
Reed said there have been two “breakthrough cases” of COVID in Kosciusko County. “Breakthrough cases”?are when someone has been fully vaccinated and becomes ill with the virus within two weeks.
“That’s statistically correct,” Reed said. “We know vaccines are not perfect, and so having two people who went on to develop COVID after being vaccinated is not a shocking number.”
Furthermore, she said only about 6 to 8% of people in Kosciusko County have reported becoming ill after their first shot.
“It was too early to call it a vaccine failure,” Reed said. “That number didn’t alarm me.”
Remington said there are 356 known UK V117 variant cases in Indiana, and about 21,000 cases in the United States.
Remington also assured people that the J&J vaccine, while it is on pause, is nothing to be fearful of.
Anyone who has had the J&J shot and are not experiencing any symptoms should not be worried, nor should they get revaccinated.
Anyone who does experience symptoms after receiving any brand of vaccine though, he encouraged them to report it on the federal website www.vaers.hhs.gov. VAERS stands for Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System.
“It’s really easy to do. Let the feds figure it out, let the CDC sort through all that,” Remington said. “The more we do that, even safer the vaccines become.”
Remington said an easier option for some people may be using the V-safe tool on their smartphone, that checks up with the patient after their vaccine and asks them three simple questions to get feedback.
Twenty-one percent of Kosciusko County residents 16 and older have been fully immunized, and at least 30% have had one dose, he said.
The next coronavirus press conference is 10:30 a.m. April 28 at City Hall and citizens are able to view it live on the city’s website. Thallemer said he will decide at that meeting if the biweekly press conferences will continue.
