Health officials: If you have been waiting for the vaccine, now is your turn

Local health officials say Covid-19 vaccines are at a “saturation point” in the Rochester area, as Mayo Clinic and Olmsted County Public Health start to see vaccination appointments go unfilled for the first time since the first inoculations began.

Dr. Melanie Swift, co-chair of the Mayo Clinic Covid-19 Vaccine Allocation Work Group, said Mayo Clinic has had open appointments all week. After months of dealing with limited appointments and strict priority groups, vaccine supply has now reached an unprecedented point — where supply is roughly on par with community demand.

“If you’ve been waiting for vaccination because you wanted high-risk people to have their chance at a vaccine, thank you for doing that, but it’s now your turn,” said Dr. Swift. 

Olmsted County Public Health Director Graham Briggs said his organization has also had trouble filling all of its available vaccine appointments, raising worries that some doses may end up going unused in the near future (although Briggs says it hasn’t happened yet).

While vaccine hesitancy in the community does worry Briggs, he says the main goal in the coming days is to find the people that want to get vaccinated, but haven’t been able to secure an appointment — whether they’ve been looking for appointments across the state without any luck, or haven’t checked at all.

“You don’t have to look at 4 a.m. at 10 different sites anymore,” said Briggs. “It’s becoming much more easily available now... to the point where we may have more vaccine than we have people that are able to access it. Now is the time, if you’re thinking about getting vaccinated — it’s there, it’s available, and it’s time.”

Roughly 69 percent of Olmsted County’s population 16 years and older has started the two-dose vaccine series, good for 53 percent of the total population. Case numbers, however, are creeping higher — 174 new cases of the virus were reported last week, the highest total since early February.

While large swaths of Rochester’s at-risk populations are vaccinated at this point, Briggs says new cases in the area are being predominantly driven by our youngest residents. About one-third of those 174 cases have reportedly struck school-age children — one of the remaining demographics with little vaccination coverage.

“It represents a pretty significant shift compared to what we’ve seen previously,” said Briggs. “We’ve protected a large piece of people over 65, in long-term care settings, people in health care, and others. Those populations are protected from long-term situations, but the downside of that is that we’ve seen the virus move more effectively through younger populations.”

Briggs recommends all students get tested for Covid-19 twice per month, and students playing spring sports should get tested weekly — per recent guidelines set forth by the Minnesota Department of Health. 

High school students age 16 and older are also eligible for vaccination with a parent’s permission, said Dr. Swift, and good news from a study of the Pfizer vaccine in children as young as 12 gives her hope that teenagers will be able to get vaccinated before the final school bell rings for the 2020-21 school year. Pfizer is awaiting word on its application to have its FDA emergency authorization order amended to include children 12 and up.

“We expect that to happen any time in April, really,” said Dr. Swift, noting it would be likely that “we won’t have much heads-up” before a ruling is reached.

Vaccination appointments are available through Olmsted County Public Health (online), Mayo Clinic (507-538-4040), Olmsted Medical Center (507-292-7300), or a variety of pharmacies in the area (Minnesota Vaccine Spotter).

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