PARKERSBURG, W.Va. — Doors open at 8 a.m. Thursday at Parkersburg High School for what will be the first coronavirus vaccination clinic specifically for school employees in Wood County over the age of 50.
“The vaccine has been long awaited and the vaccine is here,” said Will Hosaflook, superintendent of schools for Wood County.
Hosaflook said his county’s initial vaccine allotment included 400 doses.
“We are separating the 400 people out,” said Hosaflook.
Vaccinations were being scheduled through 12 p.m. Thursday utilizing three stations at PHS with oversight from a local pharmacist and Wood County’s 24 school nurses.
In Cabell County, a school employee vaccination clinic was set to run Thursday from 10:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. at Huntington High School in partnership with Marshall University’s School of Pharmacy.
Workers who qualified were being notified via email and assigned designated vaccination times.
“We’re not exactly sure how many vaccine doses we will receive,” Jedd Flowers, director of communications for Cabell County Schools, told MetroNews on Wednesday.
“We’re kind of working through that and we may have enough vaccine for everybody that registered and we may not. We’re just going to have to work through that as the day goes.”
In McDowell County, live school instruction was canceled Thursday for students to allow for a first round of school staff vaccinations.
Teachers in McDowell County were planning to post independent activities for students.
Other counties were taking different approaches to vaccinations based on available doses.
School employee vaccine distributions were being coordinated through the state Department of Education in cooperation with members of the state’s Joint Interagency Task Force.
Since the middle of December, it has been the task force that has been organizing distributions statewide, across demographics, utilizing provided supplies of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines allocated through Operation Warp Speed, the federal vaccine program.
As of Wednesday morning, information from the state Department of Health and Human Resources showed more than 60,000 of the upwards of 109,000 doses received in the Mountain State had been administered.
Teachers, school service workers and administrators under the age of 50 were to be offered vaccines at later, unspecified dates under West Virginia’s multi-phase vaccination plan.
“We’re going to try to work through the employees as quickly as we possibly can,” Flowers said. “As soon as we have vaccines, we’re going to try to get those delivered.”
Flowers said about 2,000 people work for the school system in Cabell County.
In Wood County, Hosaflook estimated about half of the 1,650 total school employees are over the age of 50, making them eligible for the earliest rounds of vaccinations.
“Hopefully, this will be an ongoing process weekly and we have been assured by the state Department of Education that all of our employees will be vaccinated,” Hosaflook said.
Governor Jim Justice has recommended returns to in-person school instruction, five days a week, in all elementary and middle schools less than two weeks from now.
For high schools, he has suggested in-person classes in counties that were not at the highest levels for coronavirus spread, the red level, on DHHR’s daily County Alert System Map.
A total of 47 counties were in the category on Wednesday morning.