By WHITNEE ICE
St. Joseph Post
Northwest Missouri COVID-19 vaccine clinic events have been canceled for this week.
Yesterday, Governor Mike Parson announced that all COVID-19 vaccination events in partnership with the Missouri National Guard, Department of Health and Senior Services, and State Emergency Management Agency scheduled for February 15th through 19th are being canceled in the interest of safety due to extreme winter weather.
Good news is, a new way to register for the COVID vaccine... called Vaccine Navigator... is up.
Regional Implementation Team Lead Jayne White says Vaccine Navigator is a system that the state of Missouri is using... similar to a waitlist...
"Even if you're not in a tier that is currently open, you can go register on Navigator and it will put you into the right tier so that as we move forward across the state with the vaccine rollout when you're in an open tier and there is an event within your region of the state, it will then send you an email saying hey there's an event in your area that you can register for," says White to the St. Joseph Post.
White says Vaccine Navigator was not up and running for the first few vaccine clinics.
"We did use it this last weekend in Cameron and it worked wonderfully. There is always a few technical issues but we were able to work through those and it went really well," White says. "It also allows, on the backside, once you arrive at the event it's a quick check-in and then the staff is able to enter your dose that is administered and it goes straight to the state's system for data entry."
White says the biggest problem for vaccine clinics right now is the bitterly cold weather we are experiencing.
"The weather is causing us some issues you know with it being cold out and we had planned for the Cameron one to be a drive-thru event but we pivoted to that being inside just because it was so cold so we are hopeful that it's going to warm back up hear in the next week or so so that we can get back to the plans and we are trying when we plan events across the region, we're trying to make sure we have a plan for an outdoor drive-thru event as well as an inside event," says White.
White says region H is provided a set number of vaccines each week which have been enough for the demand they are currently seeing for the vaccine.
"We're hopeful that everybody takes advantage of these events as they come across the region because I will say the supply going to local public health and the FQHCs is not near that of what's going to these events so I would encourage the public that if they are in the open tiers and looking for vaccine, that they reach out to the department of health and that state phone number to get registered so that they can take advantage of these opportunities," says White.
White says it's important to keep your options open.
"I just encourage people that if you're on a waitlist somewhere, to get yourselves on any waitlist that you can get on so if you're on a waitlist with another provider within the region or somewhere like that, I always encourage everybody to get on more then one list and take that opportunity for vaccine whenever it comes. Don't wait necessarily just because you're on one list," says White.
To sign-up visit the website covidvaccine.mo.gov/navigator or call 877-435-8411.