COLUMBUS, Ind. — Columbus Regional Health anticipates its weekly allotment of COVID-19 vaccines will hold steady for “the foreseeable future” as local officials seek and wait for more vaccines from state officials, who say they are awaiting more shipments from the federal government.
Currently, CRH is receiving about 1,200 to 1,500 doses of COVID-19 vaccines per week and, as of Thursday, had administered 7,482 vaccines at a clinic it is operating near the hospital campus in Columbus, said CRH spokeswoman Kelsey DeClue.
The Bartholomew County Health Department is now expecting a weekly allotment of 600 vaccines, up 100 from what they were receiving last week, said Amanda Organist, the department’s director of nursing.
The health department will offer appointments on Sundays starting in February, Organist said.
“This week we have given 274. We still have a clinic today and were closed on Monday,” Organist said.
As of Friday morning, at least 4,394 Bartholomew County residents, or about 5.2% of the county’s population, had received their initial COVID-19 shot, up from 3,131, or 3.7% of the population, the previous Friday, according to the Indiana State Department of Health.
About 1,280 people, or 1.5% of the county’s population, had received their second shot and were considered to be fully vaccinated as of Friday morning, up from 609 the Friday before.
“We have reached out to (state health officials) to ask them if we could increase our allotment and increase our appointments, and we’ve been told to just kind of stay where we are,” DeClue said.
In Indiana, COVID-19 vaccines are available to anyone age 70 and up, as well as health care workers and first responders. Bartholomew County residents can schedule appointments in other counties if they wish, DeClue said.
CRH officials are urging people to frequently check the state’s COVID-19 vaccination registration website, ourshot.in.gov, or call 211, as state health officials periodically open up more appointments slots as vaccines are shipped out each week.
As of 11:15 a.m. Friday morning, there were at least 351 vaccination appointments available at CRH over the next week, according to the state’s COVID-19 vaccination registration website.
There were 12 slots available via the Bartholomew County Health Department next week. After that, the next available appointments at the health department were Feb. 21.
Currently, it is not clear why there are so many available appointments in Bartholomew County next week. The Indiana State Department of Health, not CRH, controls and manages vaccination scheduling.
“If people have an appointment scheduled for later on and they would like to move their appointment, just be very, very cautious of doing that and make sure that if you really, really feel the need to get in earlier that you cancel your other appointment before registering for the new one,” DeClue said. “…Every appointment and every slot is valuable, so we just want to make sure that we’re not over or double-booking, or that people are not double-booking and then forgetting or not getting that second appointment canceled and then someone down the line doesn’t have a spot because it looks like it is taken.”
CRH has reported instances of people scheduling vaccine appointments and then failing to show up — including one day when there were five no-shows — prompting a mad dash to find someone else to vaccinate within 15 to 20 minutes before the vaccine spoiled and was wasted.
CRH keeps a list of staff who are on call to receive a vaccine in case of a no-show given the tight time constraints of administering the vaccine and the proximity of the clinic to the hospital campus.
DeClue said no-shows have been declining and confirmed that no doses of the vaccine have been wasted.
On Wednesday, state health officials announced that the next available group of Hoosiers who will be eligible will be those age 65 to 69 “because of the amount of vaccine that we’re receiving,” said Dr. Kristina Box, Indiana state health commissioner.
Previously, the state had said Hoosiers age 60 to 69 was going to be the next eligible group.
“We don’t have an estimated date for when this eligibility will open and you cannot make appointments at this time in that age group,” Box said.
