Name: Oklahoma health officials preparing COVID-19 vaccination plan
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Oklahoma health officials preparing COVID-19 vaccination plan

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Carmen Forman Oklahoma health officials are preparing a three-phased approach to distribute COVID-19 vaccines once a viable candidate is distributed to states.At the outset, state officials anticipate Oklahoma will receive enough vaccinations for 20,000-30,000 people, or roughly 1% of the population.Health care workers, including those that work in hospitals and have direct contact with COVID-19 patients, will be the first to be vaccinated, said State Department of Health Chief of Staff Jackie Shawnee.“Phase one, from what the CDC has laid out, will really be at-risk or critical health care workers, and then we’ll open it up from there,” she said. If supply allows, phase one could also include other essential workers and people at high risk of severe COVID-19 illness.Health officials have also said vaccinations for .There is no timeline for when average Oklahomans may be eligible to receive the vaccine that may come in the form of two doses spaced a few weeks apart.Shawnee said the state anticipates having a shortage of vaccines in phase one, a sufficient amount in phase two and a surplus in phase three.Questions of when states will start receiving vaccines, how many will be received and how quickly manufacturers will be able to scale up to produce and distribute millions of doses are still up in the air.“You can see that there are a lot of unanswered questions,” interim Health Commissioner Lance Frye told reporters Thursday.The Trump administration has advised states to be ready to receive vaccines , mere days before the presidential election. States are required to submit to the federal government their plans for distributing vaccines by Nov. 1, Frye said.It's not clear if Oklahoma's plan will be made public. Frye said he would like to release the plan publicly, but it depends on if the federal government classifies the documents as a matter of national security.Researchers are testing , with 10 options currently in phase three clinical trials in which thousands of volunteers are inoculated.The Trump administration, as part of Operation Warp Speed, is helping to speed up the development of vaccines and scale up distribution efforts so effective candidates can quickly be distributed upon approval from the Food and Drug Administration.It’s possible the FDA could approve more than one vaccine. The agency is looking to see if a vaccine is safe and .COVID-19 vaccines will be voluntary.New polling from Amber Integrated, of Oklahoma City, asked 500 Oklahomans their willingness to receive a COVID-19 vaccine. Roughly 46% of those surveyed said they would get inoculated, 37% said they wouldn't and 16% were unsure. Republicans were more likely to opt out of a vaccine, according to the poll conducted Sept. 17-20.People have worried about vaccines since the first successful vaccine was created in 1796 to combat smallpox, said OU Medicine's William Hildebrand, Ph.D. People will be able to make their own informed decisions by looking at the results of the clinical trials, he said."Vaccines have (been) met with skepticism since they’ve been developed," Hildebrand said. "You look at the numbers. You look at the phase one, two and three clinical trials and you make your decision based on those numbers."Hildebrand is hopeful Oklahoma can achieve herd immunity once a majority of residents have been vaccinated. Herd immunity occurs when a large portion of a community is immune to a disease, typically through high vaccination rates.

Carmen Forman Oklahoma health officials are preparing a three-phased approach to distribute COVID-19 vaccines once a viable candidate is distributed to states.At the outset, state officials anticipate Oklahoma will receive enough vaccinations for 20,000-30,000 people, or roughly 1% of the population.Health care workers, including those that work in hospitals and have direct contact with COVID-19 patients, will be the first to be vaccinated, said State Department of Health Chief of Staff Jackie Shawnee.“Phase one, from what the CDC has laid out, will really be at-risk or critical health care...

Oklahoma health officials preparing COVID-19 vaccination plan

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