A shipment of J&J vaccine is being allocated to Morgan County, however health officials are advising against vaccine shopping.
Administrator of the Morgan County Health Department, Dale Bainter says Morgan County continues to do well in the distribution of the COIVD vaccine, with almost 17,000 doses administered into the community.
Morgan County is scheduled to receive a small shipment of the Johnson and Johnson single-dose vaccine next week. Bainter says however that all three approved vaccines are just as good as the others.
“There seems to be a lot of buzz about the Johnson & Johnson being a single-dose vaccine. The Pfizer and the Moderna products that we’ve been continuing to administer are also very good products. By all means, we don’t encourage vaccine shopping. If you can have access to the vaccine, take the vaccine. We’ve been very fortunate to be able to maintain a good stock here and vaccinate our community.”
Bainter says the health department has been asked to use the single shot vaccine in specific instances.
“With the one-shot administration of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine and the small allotments we are getting, it’s been asked that we focus those efforts on populations that are more difficult to find or to administer the second dose.
An easy reference would be homeless individuals or someone that we might not be able to locate when we were normally going to administer that second vaccine. So, a population that’s a little more transient.”
Bainter says from the Health Departments standpoint, there is not a difference from one vaccine to the other.
He says Morgan County is continuing to trend in the right direction. Currently, Region 3 is at a 1.9% positivity and Morgan County is at 0.9%. Bainter says it’s remarkable where Morgan County has come since November and December when the prevalence of the virus was so high.
However he is asking the public to not loose sight of how we all got to this point.
“We just want to continue to be cognizant. You know everyone, myself included, we all find ourselves letting our guard down a little bit. And while the disease prevalence isn’t there right now, just a certain level of continuing to have social distancing and keeping up our guard a little bit can go a long way right now.”
To schedule a vaccination in Morgan County, call 217-479-1817, or go to the Morgan County Health Department’s website at morganhd.com.