Warren County is a priority for the first allocation of the pfizer vaccine as soon as today or tomorrow according to Jenna Link, Warren County Health Department Administrator:
“These are initial doses, so that means the Pfizer vaccine will start to be pushed out as you have seen picture in the media of things being moved. In Illinois they strategically decided they would address the top 50 counties that are seen as heavy disease burden and an increased death rate. Warren County puts us at number 19 at the moment when they did the statistics out of the top 50. So that gives us a priority for vaccine on this first allocation. We are anticipating that we will get approximately 120 doses, maybe even as early as tomorrow (December 15). We have already prepositioned. It is going to the hospital to healthcare frontline workers that are really working that frontline and getting a lot of exposure to COVID.”
The vaccine is being distributed in priority groups to include health care workers and residents in long-term care facilities as the first recipients of the vaccine. The vaccine is not mandatory and does require 2 doses with 21 days in between each dose. When the vaccine is more widely available, the Warren County Health Department will be setting up community based vaccinations for residents. As of Monday morning, Warren County had reached a total of 1300 positive cases and 29 deaths since the start of the pandemic.
