Mass COVID-19 vaccinations will begin Wednesday in Grays Harbor County, but only for qualified individuals who have already signed up with Grays Harbor Public Health’s Vaccination Intake Form.
A statement from county incident management team spokesman Nick Falley Monday read: “Grays Harbor County Public Health COVID-19 Incident Management Team, in coordination with Grays Harbor Community Hospital and the Port of Grays Harbor, is holding a mass vaccination site for the administration of COVID-19 vaccinations. The first date of this site will be Wednesday, Jan. 27 from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.”
This site — the location of which was not available at press time — is by appointment-only. Starting Sunday, Grays Harbor County Public Health began scheduling appointments based on the Vaccination Intake Form that was posted Thursday.
You can still sign up on the form for an appointment.
“If you have yet to be contacted for this round of vaccinations, you will be scheduled for a future vaccination clinic. If you do not have an appointment, you will be told to turn around. There will be absolutely no walk-in appointments” at the site, read the statement.
Prioritization for this site will be residents of Grays Harbor County who are in Phase 1A and Phase 1B Tier 1 of the Washington State Department of Health’s Vaccination Distribution Plan. Included in these phases are high-risk workers in healthcare settings, high-risk first responders, residents of long-term care facilities, people 65 years of age and older and people 50 years and older who are members of multigenerational households.
“We will not be vaccinating outside of the current phase as directed by the Washington State Department of Health,” read the statement.
If you need to be registered for a vaccination, visit http://www.healthygh.org/directory/covid19/. If you are unable to, call the COVID-19 call center at 360-964-1850. Do not call to schedule your appointment if you have already filled out the intake form.
Grays Harbor Community Hospital is “going to support (the mass vaccination site) and not have a lot of people coming here to the hospital” for vaccinations, said hospital spokesman Chris Majors. However, “everybody we have scheduled here (at the hospital) will get a vaccination here, but those moving forward we are going to have everyone go through the county and register through their system.”
As Majors understood it Monday morning, vaccines at the hospital that have not been already allocated will go toward the county mass vaccination site.
“No matter what, we will make sure they get used, no way we’re letting them go to waste,” said Majors.
Summit Pacific Medical Center in Elma sent out a release Friday saying it is no longer able to schedule appointments for COVID-19 vaccinations because of the state’s shift in vaccine distribution to mass vaccination sites.
Spokeswoman Nichole Pas said Monday the center will still be able to administer the second booster shot to those who received their first vaccination, but no appointments will be taken for a first dose until more doses can be obtained.
She said the best bet for now is to get on the Grays Harbor Public Health vaccination list.
Pas said Summit Pacific has received and allocated its 1,300 doses of vaccine.
Summit Pacific was frustrated with the state’s reallocation of vaccine to focus on mass vaccination sites, but that was before Monday’s announcement of the county’s mass vaccination site.
More information on other sites across the state that are open to the public can be found on the DOH vaccine locations page, https://www.doh.wa.gov/YouandYourFamily/Immunization/VaccineLocations.
Monday’s numbers
Monday morning, Grays Harbor Public Health posted that 71 new cases of COVID-19 had been reported between Jan. 20 and Jan. 22 in the county. There were four new hospitalization, bringing the total for the pandemic to 136.
