Health department officials: No local wait list for vaccine

AP File

The Missouri National Guard and the Butler County Health Department will hold a mid-sized COVID vaccination clinic from 9 a.m. - 2 p.m. Friday, April 23, at the Poplar Bluff Elks Lodge.

Butler County Health Department Director Emily Goodin made the announcement during the COVID briefing Wednesday.

“We’ll be working with local partners as well as the National Guard,” Goodin said. “You have to register through the state vaccine navigator, which will go live Thursday. So, I would urge everybody to go ahead and get on the navigator’s website and register, get all your information in there. So, when our event does open up, you can go ahead and just schedule your time there.”

Goodin explained, “the health department always has ordered Moderna, except for our larger events where we use Pfizer.”

“From what I’ve been told, Missouri is not shipping out any Johnson & Johnson,” she said. “Those of us who are still ordering Moderna and Pfizer, our shipments shouldn’t be affected. The closing down of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine is not going to affect people getting the medicine through the health center.”

Goodin explained Butler County has had 37 new COVID cases this past week.

“Our total stands at 4,465, and that goes back to the very beginning, so that’s everybody since 2020,” she said.

“We have gone down to doing rapid testing once a week at the health department, and that’s usually on Wednesdays,” Goodin said. “However, if there’s any special circumstances, you could always reach out, and we will try to take care of you. Right now, we are doing Wednesday testing, and you can schedule via Facebook or the website. We have an app on there that you can schedule your own appointment.”

Goodin said, vaccination clinics are still currently being done at the health department.

“With all the community clinics going on, we currently do not have a wait list,” she said. “We’re finishing up our booster shots over the next couple of weeks and those are the second dose clinics.”

Goodin and Butler County Emergency Management Director Robbie Myers clarified they can only talk about the vaccines available at the health center clinics.

Goodin said, “I know they utilized Johnson & Johnson in some of the larger events in St. Louis and Kansas City. Fortunately, for us, it just never made its way down here. I’m still working with other counties in the region and we still are expecting Pfizer for those events.”

Private health providers and pharmacies have a different distribution mode than the health department.

While more people are being vaccinated, Boys and Girls Club Executive Director Chris Rushin is dealing with keeping students safe after school.

“We’re still averaging great numbers,” Rushin said. “We had 412 on Monday and 418 yesterday. I did want to tell everybody, we’re still taking applications for the summer. We are offering non summer school hours for out-of-district kids as long as their school district is not having summer school. We want to make sure all of our kids are going to summer school. We missed five and a half months last year and Poplar Bluff R-I is having two different summer school sessions. We will not do an all day program, we will do an after summer school program. We want to make sure those kids are in school during the day and we will be there after school.”

Rushin said, if transportation is available, students from Neelyville and Twin Rivers may attend the local Boys and Girls.

“We will be providing an all-day program if we can get enough kids enrolled,” Rushin said.

R-I summer sessions will be held in June and July.