By NICK GOSNELL
Hutch Post
HUTCHINSON, Kan. — The Reno County Health Department plans on holding a vaccination clinic Friday for seniors who have not been vaccinated.
"We'll have a link on our website that will open that up to pre-register," said Karen Hammersmith with the Health Department. "Then, we will have staff that goes ahead and stratifies those that are identified as being high risk in those 65 and older so that we get to those being stratified quickly."
Data analyst DJ Gering explains what criteria are being used to decide what order to give the shots in.
"It's based off of the Johns Hopkins COVID-19 risk calculator," Gering said. "It's a mortality risk calculation tool that they have posted online. It takes into account a person's age, their underlying medical conditions, what CDC calls a socially vulnerable population."
CDC Social Vulnerability Index (CDC SVI) uses 15 U.S. census variables to help local officials identify communities that may need support before, during, or after disasters.
"That Social Vulnerability Index looks at poverty, lack of access to transportation, crowded housing and other variables that prevent public health or emergency management from preventing human suffering and financial loss during a disaster, such as a pandemic," Gering said.
The vaccination clinic on Friday will be a day long event.
"That will be at the Sports Arena on Friday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.," Hammersmith said. "We will go ahead and vaccinate 700 people there. We are working in a collaboration with that."
All entries will be stratified through the risk calculator, rather than using pure demographic data to distribute.
"I think the general consensus with our medical collaborative was, it's better to distribute that vaccine among highest risk individuals, rather than stratifying by age group alone," Gering said. "Some other counties are doing their 80 plus population and the 75 to 79 population and they're stratifying down by age group, but we wanted to calculate it by risk."
If you don't have a computer or don't know how to use one, you can call the Health Department at 844-834-3657 or 620-259-3547 to be put on the list, but with just 700 doses to be distributed, there will be more demand than they have supply for.
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