Mayo readies roll-out of vaccine to dentists, hospice workers and others in 1A group
Mayo Clinic and Olmsted Medical Center will soon begin to offer Covid-19 vaccine to dentists, hospice workers, and other community health care workers starting, a Clinic vaccination official said Thursday.
Dr. Melanie Swift, co-chair of Mayo’s vaccine distribution program, said the Minnesota Department of Health approved the expansion into the third priority group of Phase 1A earlier this week.
“This expansion includes all remaining health care workers that can’t telework,” said Dr. Swift. “Dentists, optometrists and optometry offices, audiologists, speech language pathologists, morticians, lab [workers] and funeral directors — those names are being collected by Public Health, and Mayo and OMC will each vaccinate those individuals.”
The first vaccines for people in priority group three are expected be made available the week of Monday, January 25.
Thursday’s news comes separate from the pilot program announced earlier in the week, allowing a limited number of senior citizens, educators and child care workers in Phase 1B to get vaccinated. Dr. Swift said there was no set timeline for the state to move past Phase 1A as a whole, but added Olmsted County was on pace to offer the vaccination to every person in the first two 1A priority groups by the end of January.
“We’re stitching together this patchwork quilt of vaccination,” said Dr. Swift. “It is a massive undertaking.”
The amount of vaccine available locally, however, continues to lag far behind Mayo’s vaccination capacity of 10,000 per week. Dr. Swift says the Rochester campus has received roughly 1,700 doses per week for the month of January, and doses go out the door about as fast as they come in.
Further, recent delays in shipments have caused concern among Dr. Swift’s team. The first vaccine shipments arrived on Tuesdays, but as the weeks have gone on, those shipments have started to arrive as late as Thursdays — a full week after orders are placed. If the trend continues, Dr. Swift says the entire appointment process could be upended.
“We could end up with a bunch of people — potentially, up to 2,000 people scheduled on one day at our Rochester site — who wouldn’t have a vaccine available to them,” said Dr. Swift. “That’s a bit scary, so we’re making sure we don’t fully open our calendars until we have the vaccine in our hands.”
More than 200,000 Minnesotans have received at least one dose of vaccine so far. In Olmsted County, 12.2 percent of residents have been vaccinated — the second-highest proportion of any county in the state.
Isaac Jahns is a Rochester native and a 2019 graduate of the Missouri School of Journalism. He reports on politics, business and music for Med City Beat.
Cover photo licensed via Getty
