Since January 8, 2021, the Board of Health has spent numerous hours working on providing the town with a vaccine clinic. We have worked with the Department of Public Health, MIIS, Bay State and Prep Mod.
On February 16th, we received notification our MCVP agreement was complete and “Provider site is eligible to receive COVID-19 vaccine once it becomes available.” On February 15th, we received authorization from Bay State to over see our vaccine clinic.
On February 17th, we authorized Solow to ship our required refrigeration/freezer unit.
On February 18th, the Board of Health received the following from Secretary of State Marylou Sudders who wrote:
“Effective the week of March 1st, the state will no longer provide first dose vaccines for individual municipal clinics, except for the twenty disproportionately impacted communities and established and approved Regional Collaboratives. Municipalities will receive second doses to ensure that all residents have been fully vaccinated by individual local Board of Health clinics.”
The Blandford Board of Health can continue to provide a vaccine clinic but would have to open this clinic to all individuals in the state of Massachusetts and collaborate with our surrounding towns. This means we would have to have more paperwork and commitments from the surrounding towns guaranteeing the state we would produce 750 vaccines a day/5 day a week.
During COVID-19, the administration has changed their regulations so many times, it has always been hard to keep up with. This last change, I honestly have no words for. We have been led to believe up until the very last day, that we could provide our small town with a vaccine clinic.