In late December and early January, two members of Oklahoma’s Elk City Fire & EMS, Chief Medical Officer Kyle Chervenka and Assistant Chief Medical Officer Brian Pierce, began helping the Beckham County Health Department with its COVID-19 vaccine pods. We quickly turned into “shot-givers” who met with them every Wednesday in January, February, and March.
After the first day of shot-giving, we realized there was going to be a large population we couldn’t reach: the homebound and elderly who couldn’t stand in lines or maybe even figure out a computer to set up appointments. We determined Elk City Fire & EMS was set up perfectly to help this underserved population, so by mid-January we’d started the paperwork process to begin in-home vaccinations.
By News Director Jared Atha
The expanded phase 2 portion of Oklahoma’s COVID-19 vaccine rollout plan is already taking place in western Oklahoma.
A big portion of the plan includes educators.
Tuesday, Elk City School staff members started to receive their first round of shots with other schools quickly scheduling clinics for their employees.
Elk City, City Manager Tom Ivester stated recently that the City of Elk City and the Beckham County Health Department is getting the attention of state officials on how their weekly point of distribution clinics are being operated.
Ivester says with the latest step in the state’s roll out plan, Oklahoma’s allocation of the vaccine has increased by 45%.
By News Director Jared Atha
The Beckham County Health Department along with the City of Elk City appears to be setting the standard on how to distribute the Covid-19 vaccine.
According to Elk City City Manager Tom Ivester, the health department has utilized the Elk City Civic Center on more than one occasion to be a distribution point of the vaccine, and he says it appears this will be a weekly occurrence.
Another weekly distribution location in western Oklahoma is at the Pioneer Cellular Event Center on the Weatherford campus of Southwestern Oklahoma State University. Those vaccination events are conducted every Friday as well.