With a COVID-19 vaccine on the horizon, Harvard’s Community Emergency Response Team has begun planning for the possibility of a dispensing site here in town. Fire Chief Rick Sicard, team director, told the Board of Health at its Oct. 27 meeting that the team’s first step is to make sure the town has enough equipment and materials to set up both an indoor and outdoor site.
Depending on the number of vaccines that are rolled out at once, Sicard said, dispensing sites may be regional. But he wants to be ready if the state asks the town to open an emergency dispensing site. The town’s designated site is the Bromfield School, which would be used as either an indoor or outdoor venue.
The state has a draft of a COVID-19 vaccination plan that outlines three phases of distribution. In the first phase, the state expects to receive only 20,000 to 60,000 doses, too few for all the people identified as eligible in this phase. Health care workers likely to be exposed to the disease would be first in line, followed by essential workers, and people at risk for developing serious COVID-19 illness, including those with underlying medical conditions and people over 65. Dispensing sites for this phase would likely be limited to large regional sites such as hospitals.
In the second phase, the state expects a large number of doses to become available, which would first go to the people eligible in phase one that didn’t receive a vaccination. After that, the vaccine would be offered to the broader population and the state would add more dispensing sites, including community health centers and pharmacies. Local sites might be needed during this phase for some geographic areas with limited access to other types of dispensing sites.
The third phase would start when enough doses become available to vaccinate everyone, and the state would again expand its network of emergency dispensing sites accordingly. It is during this phase that more local sites might be needed to handle the demand.
Sicard told the board that the town has sufficient cones and barriers to set up an outdoor drive-thru site, but he wanted board members’ input on what else might be needed. Member Libby Levison suggested two-way radios and some sort of shelter from the weather, such as a pop-up tent. She added that sites will likely need cold storage units for the vaccines, but those units would be provided by either federal or state emergency management agencies.
Nashoba Valley Board of Health agent Ira Grossman suggested the town put in a request for a tent from the Department of Public Health. He also suggested that Chief Sicard meet with the Police Department and the Department of Public Works to get their input.
Sicard returned to the Board of Health’s Nov. 10 meeting to discuss installation of the town’s satellite phone receiver at the Bromfield School in case it is needed as a vaccination site. Grossman said the board has been using a satellite phone for years, and it works fine outdoors and in some indoor locations. But in some cases, a remote receiver is needed for better indoor reception. Board clerk Alison Flynn said the town has two receivers, but neither was ever installed. The board agreed the receivers should be installed in the Bromfield School and the Public Safety Building, and Flynn will initiate that process.
