The Bartholomew County Health Department will offer a mass COVID-19 vaccination site at the Bartholomew County 4-H Fairgrounds next month.
The clinic will be 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. April 10 at the Bartholomew County 4-H Fairground Pavilion, 750 W. County Road 200S, said Amanda Organist, director of nursing at the Bartholomew County Health Department.
Organist said she anticipates having 1,300 doses of the Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine at the clinic. The Moderna vaccine is only authorized for use in people age 18 and up.
Bartholomew County residents ages 16 and 17 are only authorized to get Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine, which is available by appointment only at Columbus Regional Health’s vaccination site.
Vaccination appointments for the mass vaccination clinic, as well as other sites in the county, can be made on the state’s online registration portal, ourshot.in.gov, or by calling 211.
The announcement from local health officials came as the Indiana State Department of Health expanded vaccine eligibility to Hoosiers age 30 and up on Monday, making an additional 840,000 people in Indiana eligible, including nearly 11,200 in Bartholomew County.
State health officials plan to open eligibility to all Indiana residents age 16 and up on Wednesday.
As of Monday, about 60% of Bartholomew County residents were eligible to schedule appointments for COVID-19 vaccinations.
A total of 20,965 Bartholomew County residents had received one COVID-19 shot as of Monday morning, or about 25% of the county’s population, according to the Indiana State Department of Health.
Additionally, 13,650 Bartholomew County residents were considered fully vaccinated as of Monday morning, or 16% of the county’s population. That includes 392 people who received the single-shot Johnson & Johnson vaccine.
More than 95 million people in the United States have received their first COVID-19 shot, or 28.6% of the population, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
About 52.6 million people in the U.S. were fully vaccinated as of Monday morning, or about 15.8% of the population.
However, that is still well below the threshold that many public health officials, including Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s leading infectious disease expert, have said would need to get vaccinated to reach herd immunity and vanquish the pandemic, which has killed nearly 550,000 people in the U.S., including 151 in Bartholomew County.
Fauci has said between 70% to 85% of the U.S. population needs to get vaccinated to reach herd immunity.
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What: Mass COVID-19 vaccination clinic
Where: Bartholomew County 4-H Fairgrounds Pavilion
When: April 10 from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m.
How to register: Visit ourshot.in.gov or call 211
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