Resident asks supervisors to step up vaccine support

Tuesday morning at the Henry County Board of Supervisors meeting, Salem resident David Helman spoke about the importance of COVID vaccine preparedness for the county.

'The difficulty we have in Iowa, probably the whole nation, is that our public health departments in rural counties are really not set up with the structure, the size or the resources to manage for what's ahead,” Helman said. 'That means that over the course of the next time period, whether it be six months or over a year, it can go well or it can be a headache.”

According to Helman's calculations, in order to reach the CDC's herd immunity level of 80 percent, Henry County would need 32,000 vaccines in total, 7,800 doses for the 3,900 seniors 65 and older, and 24,000 doses for the 12,000 residents needed to reach the required percentage.

'Last week we got to have our first 100 vaccines, and those were gone in 25 minutes,” Helman said. 'If we only do 100 vaccines a week, it will take us six years to get the percentage for herd immunity.”

However, the number of vaccines required does not worry Helman as much as the county preparedness does.

'Each one of the vaccinations is a point of patient contact, one that's very demanding,” he said. 'In addition to waiting 15 minutes to make sure no allergy or bad reaction happens, some patients are worried or have questions that need to be answered.”

Helman said that the current setups for the COVID vaccinations are not adequate for the amount of vaccines that will need to be delivered.

'Our Public Health director, Shelly Van Dorin, is working hard to manage what she can, but we need to do our part, too,” Helman said. 'We need to have a phone system like the PBS telethon to answer questions. We need to have vaccination centers that are able to enforce social distancing within the 15 minutes of waiting.”

Helman concluded his presentation by asking the government and the board to find ways to support the county's Public Health Department.

'Our economy is not going to recover fully, and you're not going to get the consumer confidence that you want until we see that herd immunity happens,” he said. 'The public needs to know that the captain of the ship has a crew, and that we're supporting them.”

'We need to set a goal. We want to look back on this experience and say this went really well, because we came together as a community and conquered this disease.”