First Floyd County public vaccine clinic sign-up set Friday morning

By Bob Steenson, bsteenson@charlescitypress.com

County residents will get their first chance to sign up for COVID-19 vaccinations beginning Friday morning, but the number of doses is still very limited and appointments are expected to fill up quickly.

Floyd County Public Health announced Monday that the phone call center will open at 9 a.m. Friday for persons age 65 and older. The number to call is 641-257-6187.

There will be 100 doses available to the public, with the appointments being made on a first-come, first-served basis for a vaccine clinic to be held Tuesday, Feb. 9, at the Youth Enrichment Center at the Floyd County Fairgrounds.

“We’re going to have eight nurses, four stations, 15-minute time slots,” said Gail Arjes, the Floyd County Public Health administrator. “We’re hopefully going from 9 to 12. With 100 doses, it will be a good trial run. If we can ramp that up a little bit, do 10-minute time slots, we sure will. But we want to give ourselves enough time and make sure we can properly social distance.”

Arjes explained that people need to wait at the site for 15 minutes after they receive the injection so they can be watched for adverse reactions, so there needs to be enough room for those people to remain there while still allowing 6 feet or more between them.

“We don’t want to cram hundreds of people into one building,” Arjes told the Press.

It had been announced by Floyd County Public Health last week that the county was receiving 100 doses of the Moderna vaccine this week, and those would be going to first responders, school staff and day care staff.

“Late last week we received notification that we were getting an additional 300 doses,” Arjes said. “Three-hundred of that total 400 is going toward schools, plus some additional that we had left over from health care providers, which leaves us with 100 doses that we reserved back for those 65 and older.

“We weren’t expecting that additional allocation, so we were pleasantly surprised,” she said.

Floyd County Supervisor Linda Tjaden, who is acting as the county emergency management director until that position is filled, said Monday that four volunteers including her will staff the call center Friday morning, which will be set up in the county Emergency Operations Center at the courthouse.

People who call the call center number now receive this message: “At this time the call center is not open. The call center will open at 9 a.m. on Friday, Feb. 5, for a clinic being held on Feb. 9. This clinic will be for those who are 65 years of age or older. The call center will close when all appointments are full.”

Arjes said Public Health has been receiving several calls each day from people wondering when they can sign up or wondering why the county hasn’t started a sign-up list already.

The department explained last week that it is trying to avoid having to call people back multiple times.

“From previous experience with contact tracing we found that many do not answer their phone. We leave a voicemail and so begins phone tag. That is what we want to avoid,” Public Health said.

Arjes said that when people call in Friday morning they will give their name, phone number, date of birth and answer some basic health screening questions such as whether they have ever had an allergic reaction to a vaccine.

“We’re going to collect all the information on the phone call so we can run people through as fast as we can and not take the time to have to fill out paperwork once they get to the vaccination site,” Arjes said.

They will be scheduled for an appointment for their first dose next Tuesday, as well as for the follow-up “boost dose” at least 28 days later — both appointments with one call.

Arjes said the state is promising that it will schedule enough doses for the boost dose for anyone who receives the first dose.

Asked what would happen if people younger than 65 lie about their age in order to get the vaccine now, Arjes laughed and said, “We hope that people are being honest and giving us the correct birth date.”

But seriously, she said, the information is entered into the state Immunization Registry Information System (IRIS), and if a person needed to prove a vaccination later, for example if it was needed to travel, and the birth date was incorrect, it could lead to some problems.

“If they give us a fake birthdate that’s not going to work out too well for them,” she said.

Starting last week, the state’s COVID-19 information website began listing additional vaccine sites that will be available in each county.

In Floyd County, in addition to Public Health, it lists the Floyd County Medical Center hospital and clinic, Main Street Drug and Hy-Vee Pharmacy in Charles City.

Arjes said the medical center and the private pharmacies don’t have vaccine for the public yet, but they have signed up as providers for when more vaccine becomes available.

Cynthia Uetz, the pharmacist and owner of Main Street Drug, is helping vaccinate some of the day care providers this week and will also be administering the vaccine to staff at Immaculate Conception Elementary School in Charles City, Arjes said.

Floyd County Public Health will be administering the shots at the Charles City, Rockford and Central Springs public schools. Arjes said about 325 doses are needed to cover the staff at all the school districts in the county.

Arjes said she knows that the 100 doses for the first public clinic will be claimed quickly, “but we want to reassure people that we will have additional clinics.”

“We know this is going to fill up extremely fast, but as soon as we receive another allocation we’ll have the call center up and running again with another clinic set up,” she said.

“As we receive additional allocations and as those allocations start to increase, we hope to utilize our community partners a little bit more, too, and so maybe at that point residents will have more options of places to go.”

Floyd County marked its latest COVID-19-related death over the weekend, bringing that total to 38, despite the rate at which people are becoming infected continuing to decline.

The 7-day positivity rate, the average percentage of people who are tested for COVID-19 who test positive, was at 4.6% on Monday, the lowest level since August.

“The downward trend is kind of the trend in this region, in this area, too,” Arjes said, adding she hopes it’s because people are following mitigation measures.

“It’s just the same thing we’ve been preaching here at Public Health since this all started a year ago now — the social distancing, wearing a mask, frequent hand washing, staying home if you’re not feeling well,” she said.