There are many community efforts throughout the country to facilitate this critical need, and one in Vernon, Conn., that targets businesses and their employees is being noticed nationally.
Vernon’s “Getting ‘Vax’ to Business” is a recent effort by the town to lead the state toward herd immunity by making it easy for businesses to get their employees vaccinated and by giving at-risk or vulnerable populations the opportunity to get vaccinated without any red tape.
The program is run by Michael Purcaro, the town administrator as well as emergency and risk management director, and has so far targeted restaurants, an agricultural nursery, a large dry cleaner and a dairy farm, among other businesses.
“These are folks who normally don’t have access to the types of care that most of us do, and that’s been the hallmark of our efforts: reaching out to the hardest to reach and most vulnerable out there and breaking down those barriers,” Purcaro said.
But it’s also a boon for employers, like a local Subway restaurant, which recently had its employees vaccinated via the program. Getting “Vax” to Business allows the employer to ensure that workers are vaccinated, and it can be done without them missing work.
At Rein’s Deli, a local institution, for instance, waitresses were vaccinated between waiting on tables while on duty.
Swiss Cleaners services the entire New England region with more than 20,000 employees, many of whom are non-English speaking and/or have no insurance. Many also are skeptical of getting vaccinated, but the program includes a Spanish-speaking doctor who helps answer the employees’ questions and puts them at ease with the process. As workers were doing the dry cleaning, they were also getting vaccinated for COVID-19.
More than 70 were inoculated at a dairy farm, many of whom are migrant workers of Mexican descent and almost all of whom speak only Spanish. Again, the doctor on scene helped calm fears and explain the process.
“Once they heard someone speaking their language, who can answer their questions and demystify concerns, many said they decided then to get vaccinated,” Purcaro said. “We don’t care who they are, as long as they’re eligible here. We want to provide unfettered access to the vaccine in the most convenient, easy way we can.”
Vernon has set up a call center where residents or businesses can call, find out if they are eligible and set up appointments. There are clinics set up that can do up to about 1,700 vaccinations in a day.
A similar effort to reach vulnerable populations is underway in Tarrant County, Texas, where officials have identified certain ZIP codes where residents may not get vaccinated without help. The county has enlisted MedStar Mobile Healthcare, a regional emergency medical service based in Fort Worth, to provide mobile vaccinations to residents in those areas.
“It was a three-headed approach: collaboration with the city of Fort Worth and Tarrant County Public Health, and the county gave us the request with the ZIP codes, and from there we started determining site locations,” said Michael Potts, emergency management administrator for MedStar.
These efforts will help the region and country reach herd immunity. “When we have geographical or social pockets of unvaccinated people, it really messes up herd immunity,” said Daniel Salmon, director at the Institute for Vaccine Safety at Johns Hopkins University’s Bloomberg School of Public Health.
In addition to the vaccine-to-business program and call centers, Vernon has been innovative in other ways, such as setting up a program with Uber which provides transportation for residents in the region to vaccination clinics. Uber will send a driver trained in health care to pick up residents, take them to clinics, wait for them as they get vaccinated and take them home again.
Purcaro and staff started doing mobile vaccinations at churches, synagogues and shelters almost three months ago, and has been contacted by cities and towns across the country who want to learn from their experiences.
They’ve been touted by the CDC as having a model program and featured on the NBC Nightly News.
Purcaro said the program’s roots in emergency management and relationships that have been built up over the years have made a difference in getting the vaccination efforts off the ground.
“The one thing that separates us is we have such a strong incident command, emergency management focus,” he said. “We’re very transparent and that’s why people like working with us. We’re not afraid to share our experiences, and that includes what we did well and what we didn’t do well.”
