Bristol Bay will have to wait at least another week for its first dose, while healthcare providers grapple with the logistical challenges of getting the vaccine to rural areas.
From Ketchikan to Kotzebue, communities across the state began to administer their first doses of coronavirus vaccine this week.
But Bristol Bay will have to wait at least another week for its first dose, while healthcare providers grapple with the logistical challenges of getting the vaccine to rural areas.
Bernina Venua, the incident commander for the Bristol Bay Area Health Corporation’s COVID-19 task force, said the corporation plans to start administering the vaccine in the last week of December.
“Currently we are in Phase 1A. And that means that it is only for frontline healthcare workers,” she said.
The state’s Vaccine Allocation Committee will distribute the vaccine in phases. The first round includes hospital-based healthcare workers; community health aides and practitioners; EMS workers and long term care residents and staff.
The health corporation has a tentative plan as more phases are announced for wider distribution to villages.
But Venua said new information and factors such as unpredictable weather could make that difficult.
“The challenges with administering vaccines in the villages also relate to having both vaccines being a two-dose vaccine,” she said. “There’s different timeframes for each vaccine but we have to ensure that we are able to return with the appropriate allocation and within that time frame.”
BBAHC doesn’t know which vaccine it will administer initially — Venua said they are waiting for more information from the state.
But eventually, it expects to use both Pfizer and Moderna. The Food and Drug Administration on Friday authorized the Moderna vaccine for emergency use.
Venua said the health corporation will work on plans to protect people being vaccinated in villages from the type of allergic reactions that happened in Juneau earlier this week.
“We are creating teams for administration to fly to the villages with the vaccine. We’ll have it so that we’re also ready for any possible severe reaction,” she said.
The Pfizer vaccine requires ultra-cold storage at minus 94 degrees Fahrenheit. That requirement poses problems for facilities without adequate freezers. The Moderna vaccine can be stored in a normal freezer at minus four degrees Farenheit.
Mary Swain is the executive director of the Camai Community Health Center in the Bristol Bay Borough. She said the health center plans to use the Moderna vaccine because of the logistics of getting it to Naknek.
“We don’t have ultra-cold storage yet. We will be getting that but we don’t have it currently,” Swain said. “The second reason is, once it’s here, because of the way they would ship it, we would have very limited time to use it up. So for them to send us, say, 100 doses, we would have to have 100 people in that phase lined up, ready to go.”
The Bristol Bay Borough doesn’t have enough people who qualify under that first phase of vaccine distribution, Swain said. The Camai clinic expects an initial allocation of 100 doses of Moderna vaccines.
“We have about 40 doses that we know we’ll give off right off the bat, and that is our EMS, healthcare workers, and that demographic,” she said.
Alaska’s initial vaccine allocations will include an estimated 35,100 doses from Pfizer and 26,800 doses Moderna.
For now, testing is still the best way to keep the community safe. Camai tests an average of 100 people a week.
Camai anticipates several challenges in distributing vaccines. Swain said the vaccines are fragile, which is why they need to be kept cold. When the Moderna vaccine is taken out of a freezer and placed in a refrigerator, she said, there is a three-hour window to transport it.
For now, Camai plans to fly patients from the village of South Naknek over to the clinic to get vaccinated.
“Because there is a monitoring period, and we need to make sure that they’re in a facility that if they do have any kind of reaction to the vaccine, we need to have them here,” she said. “We’ll probably fly them over in the morning in shifts throughout a couple days so that we can monitor them before they go back home to South Naknek.”
Vaccine distribution depends on the region.
"Each region is doing a little differently as far as when it’s getting out there and how it’s getting out there, and that’s for the state allocation," The state's chief medical officer, Dr. Anne Zink, said. "There’s also Tribal allocation."
Dr. Bob Onders is a medical director at the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium and the interim director at the Alaska Native Medical Center in Anchorage. He said Bristol Bay is in a relatively good position — it's still able to emphasize testing and minimize spread of the disease in the region.
“We’re working to expand our critical care unit capacity to try to ensure that we have the facilities available for when our rural partners call and need to transfer patients here into Anchorage for higher levels of care,” he said.
Even though vaccinations are starting, Onders added, it won’t prevent the spread of the virus until it's widely available, which means that people have to continue taking precautions to keep themselves and their loved ones safe.
Ralph Anderson, president and CEO of the Bristol Bay Native Association, echoed those sentiments at a regional panel with state health officials this week.
“The fact that the vaccines are out — it’s like doing backflips, or mental backflips, watching the shot being given yesterday that nearly brought tears to my eyes,” he said. “I know it brought tears to the people I know. Because just the sense of relief that help is on its way.”
Editor's note: Bernina Venua is the sister of KDLG seasonal reporter Brian Venua.
Update: This story has been updated to reflect that the Food and Drug Administration Friday authorized the Moderna vaccine for emergency use.
Contact the author at isabelle@kdlg.org or 907-842-2200.
