Sometimes, when life throws a literal obstacle, you just have to do it improvise and hope for the best. That was the case when a group of health workers with doses of COVID-19 vaccine got stuck in a snowstorm on an Oregon highway. I don’t want to let these doses expire, they administered them to drivers stuck in the snow.
On Tuesday, Josephine County public health staff held a mass vaccination event at Illinois Valley High School in Cave Junction, Oregon. After a successful event, the team had six doses left to deliver to Grants Pass recipients. Unfortunately, the team did not reach Grants Pass, while a snowstorm blocked them on Highway 199 near Hayes Hill.
To make matters worse, the vaccines had to expire before reaching their destination.
But the workers were not about to let the good vaccines expire and, with an ambulance at hand, they set up a makeshift clinic by the roadside. JCPH staff went from car to car giving stranded drivers a chance to receive the COVID-19 vaccine. Eventually, the six doses were administered successfully, which took full advantage of a poor situation. One of the recipients was a person who failed to reach high school in time for the original event.
I love this story. Being stuck in a snowstorm is a terrible situation. You can’t move anywhere and you have no idea when you’ll be up and running again. It is even worse if you are a medical worker trying to deliver a vaccine before it expires. But these people jumped straight into action to make sure no dose wasted.
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To add icing to this good story, the director of the health department, Mike Weber, said that the situation is one of the strongest operations he had been involved in.