HAMILTON — Health leaders in the Bitterroot are working out plans to get as much vaccine to as many providers as possible in an effort to protect elderly residents against the coronavirus.
Ravalli County Health Department Director Tiffany Webber told the Board of Health on Wednesday that the county has been giving about 20-shots per day, with more at Marcus Daly Memorial Hospital and some of the local clinics.
She's hoping to push more of that vaccine out to local clinics and pharmacies, especially since those operations may have better information on a patient's underlying health conditions and medications.
"I would rather see somebody with a qualifying condition getting that vaccine from their physician who's saying 'yes, I think you should get this’,” Webber said. “Rather than me and my nurses at Public Health having to try and think about what medicines are they on... do they need to stop something, hold back on something? I don't know. There's not data available on that."
Webber says that would also allow Ravalli Country Public Health to focus on the elderly.
In a new development, Marcus Daly Memorial Hospital will be dispensing up 975 doses of the unused Pfizer vaccine recently released by pharmacies for long-term health care centers through the state.
Those vaccines will be given from 8 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. at the Bitterroot Physicians Clinic in Hamilton by appointment only to Phase 1B patients who are already on waiting lists.