Madam Mayor,
I use information from the attached OHA website. It is for the State, not localized, but the Jackson County record is worse than the state as a whole.
You can see that the State only was able to administer 40% of its allocated jabs through the previous weeks. And now nearly 400,000 more are due to arrive or have arrived.
This is a record that is putting government’s ability to respond in significant question. Not a record to improve the public’s trust in the system.
Something must change and very soon. I hope you can speak out and speak to the County and express our mounting concern that they will be throwing vaccine out if they do not get their act together.
(My only partially educated guess is that these doses wind up in the various institutions and wind up being cached. So the structure of the distribution is poor. It’s a little surprising that the doses are not being allocated to OHA for efficient distribution on demand daily so they are not hidden away. Maybe that won’t work but something needs to be done.)
It takes 2 hours to teach an average person to administer the jabs. When we did the Salk vaccine, it was the Red Cross set up. The National Guard is trainable. There are no excuses. Money is not an issue. Volunteers are very available. Many would sign up because they have lost their jobs in this nightmare.
I hope you can be a voice for reform and action in the distribution of the COVID vaccine in the Rogue Valley.
Dave Helmich, Ashland Resident
Link to Oregon Health Authority Vaccine Website – https://public.tableau.com/profile/oregon.health.authority.covid.19#!/vizhome/OregonCOVID-19VaccinationTrends/OregonStatewideVaccinationTrends
