It took a lot of wrangling, but on Friday, Village Shalom pulled off its first COVID-19 vaccination clinic for staff and residents.
The clinic, held in the social hall of the main building, provided the first of two doses to 117 staff members and 88 residents, according to Paige Wheeler, vice president of healthcare. Participation was voluntary.
Those figures represent about 92% of the skilled nursing and assisted living residents and about a third of the staff members.
Speaking a day before the clinic, Village Shalom CEO Matt Lewis said the hard work and headaches have been worth it. “Our families and residents are very excited about it. This is a major thing for us. We have been looking forward to this for quite some time.”
Wheeler would’ve liked to see greater participation from staff, but based upon what she has been hearing from her colleagues, the rate is in line with rates at other Johnson County senior communities. Many staff wanted to wait and see how the first round went before deciding, Wheeler said.
Three residents declined to participate Friday. Five others were ineligible for health reasons.
Village Shalom has two more clinics scheduled for Feb. 5 and Feb. 26, designated for the second dose and to provide more opportunities for staff to participate.
Wheeler spent a good month working through the logistics of getting the clinic scheduled. Village Shalom has been working with CVS, which, along with Walgreens, is the federal designee for vaccinating nursing home residents and staff.
It took fruitless efforts to reach CVS via email or a toll-free phone number, and cycling through different field contacts, until a third field representative finally was able to provide clear guidance. But even then, Wheeler was unsure up until the day of clinic how many staff would be there. Ultimately, four workers came.
Up until virtually the last minute, Wheeler said, “we were just relying on a toolkit CVS had set up on their website.”
Since the beginning of the pandemic in the spring, Village Shalom has had 59 cases of COVID combined between staff and residents.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved two, two-dose vaccines. One from a Pfizer-BioNTech another from Moderna. Village Shalom is providing the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.
Rollout of the vaccine has been rocky in Kansas and nationwide.
As of Tuesday, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that only 12.3 million doses have been administered out of the roughly 31.2 million doses distributed. About 1.4 million of the doses administered have come in long-term care facilities.
CDC data issued earlier this month ranked Kansas dead last among states in its vaccination rate, though state officials blamed the ranking on slow reporting from the field. Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly said last week the state has made up ground and is now in the top tier of states nationally in vaccinations.
Kansas has established a five-phase plan for vaccinating the state population. First in line are healthcare workers; residents or patients in long-term care senior housing; and workers critical to pandemic response continuity.
As of Tuesday, the Kansas Department of Health and Environment reported that, out of approximately 202,000 doses distributed, about 117,400 have been administered. The department said 3.5% of the population has been vaccinated.
President Joe Biden has pledged to administer 100 million doses in the first 100 days of his administration.
Independent living residents were a late addition to the first phase of the Kansas implementation plan. Village Shalom was unable to include its approximately 125 independent living residents in the initial clinic, Wheeler said. Village Shalom hopes to include the independent living residents in an upcoming clinic, but until then, she said, “We are trying to find any potential outlet for them as soon as possible.”
The first clinic was tiring and exhilarating.
Around 5 p.m., just as the final vaccinations were being given on Friday, Wheeler plopped into a chair in an office off the lobby in the north main entrance. “It has been quite a day,” she said.
With CVS staff members on hand, vaccinations had been going nonstop since 10:45 a.m. Registration got off to a slow start, with some employees waiting upwards of two hours to get through the line.
But the atmosphere was festive, Wheeler said, as staff and residents finally felt like they could let a huge exhale from worrying about getting or transmitting the virus.
As Wheeler accompanied the CVS crew upon their arrival, it was a big celebration with staff clapping. “I felt like I was escorting the biggest VIPs in the country,” Wheeler said.
When she got her shot, it was like a weight being lifted off her shoulders. “I just had tears of joy, honestly,” she said. “It was very emotional.” At the prompting of the staff, Wheeler was the first one to receive a shot.
Also involved in the vaccination day were Lori Davidson, director of social services, and Katie Wilcox, director of memory support.
Wheeler and her two colleagues said that many of the residents were getting vaccinated at the behest of their families — one saying, “My daughter-in-law is a doctor, and she said do it.”
All three women agreed that the overriding sentiment of the staff was that they were doing it out of a sense of responsibility to the residents. Wheeler said some staff that had not signed up for this first round expressed some regret as they watched on Friday.
One certified nursing assistant, who works the overnight shift in the memory support building, waited for four hours after her shift ended at 7 a.m. to get her shot. She was due back at the facility again at 11 p.m. She went second after Wheeler.
Even with the vaccination clinics, Wheeler said Village Shalom will maintain the same level of infection control and surveillance testing it has employed throughout the pandemic. She said Village Shalom has had four infection control surveys from the state, each showing no deficiencies.
The diligence will likely continue for the rest of the year, Lewis said. If and when any changes occur, he said, “I think it’s going to be a gradual process.”
