Tim Shelley / Peoria Public Radio
By the end of this week, the first few thousand residents of Peoria, Tazewell, and Woodford Counties in the 1B group will have received their first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine.
Local health departments are allocating their vaccine shipments to OSF HealthCare, UnityPoint Health, and Heartland Health Services for wider distribution to the 1B population.
That population is a large group, and the process will take quite a while, said Peoria City/County Health Department Administrator Monica Hendrickson. With the amount of allocation that we re getting, which is limited, if we as a Tri-County see anywhere between three and four thousand vaccines coming into our counties each week, it will take us over eight weeks to vaccinate that population, she said. So the short answer is, we need patience during this time.
PEORIA COVID-19 vaccinations began this week for folks in the 1B category, and a large number of area seniors has been lucky enough to get the call.
Last week, when area health officials announced a don’t-call-us-we’ll-call-you policy for vaccinations, it was disconcerting news for many residents. After all, how would health officials know who to get hold of and how to reach them?
But as the system was put into action this week, a number of people were happy to see that it is working.
“It was like a phone call out of the blue,” said 75-year-old Peoria resident Pat Goitein on Wednesday. “They called on Monday, and within 24 hours I was vaccinated.”
PEORIA – Regular COVID-19 testing is about to become a thing for high school students in Peoria Public Schools.
The district has formulated a plan for its high schools similar to the one Bradley University implemented last fall. In an effort to monitor positivity rates and isolate infected kids quickly, regular testing in the high schools will begin after students return to in-person classes Jan. 19.
“A lot of information that we are receiving is that the students in the high school age range, 14 to 18 years of age, can be COVID-positive and not necessarily exhibit symptoms,” said Josh Collins, the head of the Peoria Public Schools District s Return to School planning committee. “So what we are hoping to accomplish with the periodic test is to monitor that, so that if we have an asymptomatic, COVID-positive student, we would catch that quickly, and have that student follow the isolation process for being COVID-positive to help mitigate the spread amongst peers or staff.
Ben Pollard/1470-100.3 WMBD
WEST PEORIA, Ill. The Peoria City/County Health Department announced Tuesday it has opened a “closed point of dispensing,” or “closed pod,” to ensure healthcare providers across the area are vaccinated.
Heddington Oaks in West Peoria is the first of these dispensing points, which is where Health Administrator Monica Hendrickson led Tuesday’s weekly news conference.
“For those entities that qualify for [tier] 1A and are interested in getting the vaccine, they can do it a couple of ways,” said Hendrickson. “The first is to send an email to vaccinerequest@peoriacounty.org.”
Woodford and Tazewell Counties are also slated to set up similar situations, she said. Information about those will be released in the near future.
The former Heddington Oaks nursing home will serve as a distribution site for COVID-19 vaccines.
Peoria City/County Health Department Administrator Monica Hendrickson said the former West Peoria facility will serve as a vaccination site for top-priority workers for at least the next two months. Peoria County owns the building, closing the nursing home earlier this year. We know there are a lot of health care providers outside our hospital systems. We want to make sure we get them vaccinated. So with that, we ve opened up what s known as a closed point of dispensing, or closed pod, she said.
Some of those workers include EMS workers, hospital staff who don t get a vaccine at work, clinical facility staff, dentists, and pharmacy employees. Frontline hospital staff also are eligible if they live or work in Peoria County. Advanced Medical Transport will help staff the closed-pod vaccination site.