Talking COVID vaccine with Platte Co Health Director

hey everybody welcome in it’s another episode of landmark live on another freezing cold night in platte county but you are tuned in to the hottest podcast in kansas city’s northland and we’re glad you’re here we’ve got a special show for you tonight going to be very informative very educational we’re going to talk covid 19 everything covered 19. we’re going to talk the vaccination we’re going to learn what the latest numbers are in platte county but everyone has questions about the coven 19 and the vaccination process and the vaccine supply and tonight we have the lady who can supply us with the answers our guest this evening is mary jo vernon she’s the director of the platte county health department mary jo welcome in and thanks for joining us mary jo just let’s start with a little bit of your background now uh how long have you been with the health department and tell us a little bit about yourself and your professional life here with the health department okay well um thank you ivan thanks for having me um i know this is a topic everybody is interested in so i’ve been at the health bar for about 23 years so um seems just like yesterday but yeah and i’m an rn bachelor’s prepared rn and um came here you know after working in the hospital setting you know home health a lot of different settings so public health is just a very different way to use your nursing degree but very very interesting so absolutely now have you ever experienced a time like the past what 11 or 12 months do you long for the days when the health department was that was kind of in the background and not not getting a lot of attention i bet you yeah yeah you know that people just knew that we did baby shots and breastfeeding classes and things yeah a little wick yeah but it all changed about uh yeah i remember you coming to a county commission meeting to to inform us all about the kova 19 threat at that time i think that was an early march and just kind of go through uh recycle in your mind some of the highlights of the past 10 or 12 months for you yeah you know i think the most challenging part of it is that it’s a novel virus so we don’t know all the information about it i’ve i’ve said over and over to my staff and the people in the community we’re it’s like we’re living a giant science project you know and that sounds real cool until you’re living it and you don’t have all the answers so you know as the director of the health department that’s been very frustrating you know to not have the answers but um you know just as we you know saw cases increase or what we thought were increasing and high you know back in the day and right and we started making public health orders to try to the board and i did to try to protect the citizens you know that was met with you know approval on one side of the fence and and disapproval people just you know it’s hard for folks to understand you know that in a pandemic you know you just have to do what you have to do to save lives and protect people and i think as the virus has has progressed in the world in the united states in missouri and in platte county i think people are seeing now that’s why we did what we did i mean you know people this is taking lives and that’s what we’re you know as a health department that’s what we’re here to protect that has to be your number one priority that’s right now uh tell us what are the numbers looking like now as far as the number of cover 19 cases trending downward i assume yes they are trending very much downward i was on a call this morning with all the school superintendents and they said it it’s eerily you know they’re going down eerily low and it’s kind of like what’s going on you know um so you know a lot of some of the hypothesis about that is um there’s a downward trending in testing you know so if you’re not testing you’re not finding out how you know how many cases that you have so there’s differences in testing and a lot of the the schools price and doctor’s offices are doing this antigen test which the state doesn’t recognize that as a definitive diagnosis so that could be responsible for some of you know the downward trend i mean it’s a virus you know it’s a living thing so it’s doing it’s doing its own thing here you know so it’s winter you know um it’s cold you know maybe people are you know not getting together as much it’s just so many variables you know can affect the actual rates yeah hey folks uh i want you to go ahead and type in some questions as the show moves along if we have a chance to get to your questions we will i know everyone is interested in this topic and likely has a question so if you have one just type it in if we if we get a chance to get to it we shall but thank you for tuning in uh mary jo how many deaths of platte county residents have taken place due to this virus yeah there it’s over a hundred you know and um you know people die of things all the time but can i tell just a little story and this just happened and this was a nurse that used to work for us she her family went to a baby shower just recently nobody at the shower were wearing masks the day or two after the baby shower um uh an individual that attended the shower came up positive um everybody at the shower ended up turning positive and this week um the grandma you know ended up passing away from it um and then the pregnant individual ended up getting it delivering her baby early couldn’t see her baby for like a week and a half so you know it’s just not time to let our guard down and this is how serious you know this can be so imagine that young person that turned positive and knows that she’s the one you know yeah that caused that i mean what a what a burden to carry the rest of your life so and you know the the deaths have been you know of course more um heavily in the older population but not all of them i mean we’ve had folks in their you know 30s 40s 50s you know in the kansas city area that have died and excuse me but that’s young yeah it is we’re going to dive into the vaccine topic i think that’s the uh the topic that’s on everyone’s mind because our office has been getting a lot of questions and we’re newspapers so i can only imagine what the health department is getting in terms of the number of questions i want to lead off tonight we do have a sponsor tonight we’ve got brandon edlund of the edlund team realtors kind enough to sponsor this episode of landmark live the spring market is here the real estate market by the way in platte county is crazy brandon will tell you all about it if you’re thinking about buying or selling a home we can help we offer great customer service and since we work as a team you will have dedicated service from not only your agent but from the entire edlund team we would love to help you sell your current home or find your dream home give the edlund team a call at 816-858-6002 or check them out at the edlundteam.com thank you brandon okay mary jo let’s talk about the vaccine now there’s there’s a lot of talk about why platte county has not been able to get very many doses of the vaccine so explain the process of how it’s determined how many doses your department gets well i think a lot of people think that there’s vaccines sitting down at jefferson city you know the missouri department of health that’s not the case so the missouri department of health is allocated a certain number of doses for the state of missouri and up until this week that was 75 000. so you think about 75 000 doses to be dispersed you know across the whole state of missouri that’s not much i’m happy to report that got increased to 90 000 um this week so that’s you know smidge of good news um so then um the state then has determined recently to have what they call a vaccine cadence of how they are distributing the vaccine across the state so probably a lot of people have heard about the hospitals there are 16 hospital systems throughout the state of missouri that have been approved by the state department of health as high throughput health care facilities you know places that can push out a lot of vaccine you know in a short amount of time so those facilities are getting um about 53 of the vaccine so that we can get you know the most people vaccinated as possible and then health departments were were getting 6 000 doses a week that’s now increased to i believe to 9 000 doses a week so that’s also good news federally qualified health centers which would be like in our area like sam rogers swope health center they’re also getting you know um allocation of that those doses as well those were six thousand i’m not sure what those have been increased to so doctor’s offices have been allocated some doses as well as pharmacies i think a lot of folks know that um walmart and sam’s just got approved to have uh doses offered at their pharmacies so so anyway they’re the the state is just trying to divide those doses up and disperse them as evenly as possible so the one way this week that um you know we’ve been notified that they’re distributing it by uh highway patrol region so we’re in highway patrol region a region a has 23 percent of the missouri population so they’re trying to you know allocate dosages by by that um with population so um there’s 13 counties in region a so we’re just one of 13 counties so prior to this new you know increase in dosages this region a was only getting 1600 doses a week so just to let you know platte county health department we received 400 doses this week that’s 25 you know of that 1600 so you know the public sees just the small amount that we’re giving but you know the state is you know trying to give platte county you know a little a little more dosages so the week prior we got 300 doses the week prior to that we got 200. so so there has been some criticism that that neighboring clay county is is getting more in comparison to platt and can you tell us the basis for that i mean what’s the thought behind it so um these hospital systems that i was just referring to so north kansas city hospital partnered with liberty hospital to apply to get approved for that so and they were approved so they are receiving 4 500 doses of vaccine twice a month so 9 000 doses and right now they’re administering those doses to clay county residents only so st luke’s health system also was approved as one of those we call them the sweet 16. so um so st luke’s also was approved we um i’ve had conversations with north kansas city hospital their ceo has been very gracious said he will help us you know when we get a a mass vaccination site set up he’ll be happy to help us staff that but for right now they were vaccinating clay county people so st luke’s we’ve partnered with them as well and they’ve this week they gave us 300 doses of vaccine we’re very grateful for that um but you know moving forward just like everything covered you know st luke’s health system we’ll have to see you know how their demand is as well we don’t have a guaranteed amount from them so um and st luke’s partnered with hca so those two hospitals are getting 4 800 doses twice a month so st luke’s health system is only getting 2 400 you know there’s we split those so then you think of how many you know hospitals and clinics st luke’s has you know the numbers start dwindling down pretty good so to me for them to give us 300 doses this week that was a huge blessing for platte county and you folks did did an operation you did a vaccination event yesterday i think today today today and tomorrow yes very proud of my staff um really within 48 hours we have called and scheduled 700 doses so we have a survey on our website where people can go in and fill it out expressing their interest that they are wanting the vaccine give us their personal information their age if they have any underlying health condition and then so that we can determine which tier they’re in and then we contact them just by phone because that’s the only system that we have at this time so but we were able to schedule you know 700 people and um today we vaccinated 350 people out of our building on 110th street and a lot of those people were um the age bracket we’re trying to last week we did 90 year olds and over this week we went down to 82 year olds and over so my staff just did a fabulous job today i was down there for several hours and we said that we were doing um concierge valet wheelchair transport and the black county sheriff’s department even provided us blankets to wrap up you know our elderly people to keep them as warm as possible as you said at the start of the show here it’s rigidly cold out there so that’s amazing now how many folks have completed i think you’re calling it a survey on your website do you have any idea how many platte counties have filled out that survey and are on your list over twenty thousand no kidding over twenty thousand and how many have been vaccinated so far that we’re on that original twenty thousand list we’ve got about 1700 and then just to clear up your question about clay county i did speak with a clay county health director you know they’re partnering with north kansas city but they um north kansas city hospital gets an allocation and then as clay county health department gets an allocation all they’ve received in totality since vaccines started being distributed is two orders of pfizer vaccine so that’s 975 doses each so you know around 1900 doses is what they’ve received we’ve now received as of tomorrow have received and vaccinated 1700 at the from the platte county health department so the clay county numbers are inflated by what north kansas city hospital and liberty what that coalition is doing and they’re doing a great thing but people are comparing those numbers to what pluck county health department are getting so see it’s not really a fair comparison and clay county i did pull a report off the state website clay county has now provided at least one vaccine to 7.7 percent of their population and platte county has provided um the first at least one vaccine to 7.3 percent of our population so percentage-wise we’re running pretty close so that’s interesting now as you go down the phases and the tears you started with like age 90 and above i think last week right yes and then today’s event started at like age 82 i think you said and that so how many of those people are still left to get a vet you know i don’t know that number but there’s hundreds you know um but i just want to put a little kudos up to those folks these are tough people i mean they weren’t complaining today at all they were they were just so happy to be getting a vaccine yeah yeah so the next tier down now after you complete this age 82 and above the next year down will be what category like we’ll probably go down into the 70s you know this tier that we’re the state of missouri has approved right now is 65 and older and and people who have chronic health conditions that are some of them are listed um specifically but we’re trying to get the most at risk people first you know which is every decade of age you know that’s on us you know your risk goes up and your risk for a bad outcome with covet goes up so that’s why we’re slicing the pie so to speak and doing it in you know age increments like we are is now someone who has health conditions that that you know they might be a younger person younger than the age groups you’re just talking about would they kind of be pushed to the to the to an upper phase because if we had the vaccine yes we’re talking cancer chronic lung disease you know an immunosuppression disease you know things like that um obesity is one of the factors as well with the bmi over 40 because you know our stats have shown us that folks who are very overweight have a poor outcome with with covet as well so interesting so is how does it work every is it every monday your office gets a notification on how many doses you’ll be getting from the state and that changes weekly right yes yes that’s how it works so previous to this um cadence that the state’s doing in allocating it by um region um we would put in a an order by five o’clock on wednesday and then um the state has a team of people that would review that and they would do that on thursday and then we would be notified you know the hope was that we’d be notified usually over the weekend that we were approved for an order and then by monday we would find out the actual number so see then that makes it so then you have monday you find out say you’re getting 300 doses and the state has asked us to get it in arms within seven days and i’m very proud to say that from the time we’ve received vaccine within three days we’ve had all 100 of the vaccine in arms so see what that means though you find out monday how many you’re getting then you have to start calling people you know and scheduling those appointments so typically we’ve been setting up our vaccine clinics on thursday and friday so that we have a little time to call folks and get them scheduled well kudos to the people doing the phone work i mean that’s a lot of that’s a lot of phone calls to make how many staffers do you have just making the phone calls well we’ve pulled people from the environmental health protection you know division and our health educators and you know people from others so we’ve had about four or five people you know making those calls so interesting yeah okay so so what’s next do you encourage people to get on as many of these surveys or registration lists that they can in other words if they if there’s a private source that’s offering a sign up you encourage everyone just register in as many places as they can yes that you know that creates a redundancy of people’s names being on several lists but just get your name on list so that you know would increase your chances you know of your your number coming up you know um to to be contacted to get the vaccine so and i do want to clarify early on we were kind of um asked to encourage people to register on the website of the health department you know jurisdiction where you live so for platte countians that was people that lived in platte county with the kansas city address we were asking them to register on the kansas city health department’s website and then folks that live in platte county without a kansas city address to register on our website but um you know we’ve i’ve just about a week and a half ago i changed that and said people that live in platte county definitely just register on our website because um you know we want to try to take care as many platte county residents as we can and just didn’t want to create any barriers for people so i’m going to assume that it’s way too early to estimate how long your it’s going to take to get through the the various tiers right just because well the supply is so it’s so unpredictable right right we have gotten word from the uh the state um as they’ve had communication from the federal government the operational warp speed that they are very um hopeful that vaccines going to start rolling out you know fairly fairly quickly so you know we at platte county health department we want to be ready for that so we have started um setting up a mass vaccination site in riverside missouri we’re working with the owner nathaniel hagedorn he owns north point development he’s been very good to us very gracious as letting us use a uh one of his warehouses a nice newer warehouse down in riverside and we’re getting supplies ordered and you know starting to get that set up so hopefully you know first part of march we might be you know ready to set up and start vaccinating there we may still only be getting two or three hundred doses a week but then when that faucet opens you know that vaccines are you know thousands are going to start rolling out we’ll have capability at that facility to vaccinate several thousand people a day so so the mass vaccination event is there any hope that there would be a private donation of vaccine that would help you do these mass vaccination events or is that just all going to have to be from the state allotment right yeah it has to come from the state allotment and you know then that and that comes from the federal you know side from operation warp speeds so um we’re just all hopeful as more vaccine gets approved you know johnson johnson is you know in the in the holding pen you know to try to get their vaccine approved and get that out and that’s just a one one shot dose you know so that will be helpful as well too yeah now explain the uh the dosage then those who got a shot today have to go back when and get their second shot okay so today we were giving modern a vaccine so you you come back in four weeks to get your second dose of that pfizer vaccine is a three-week wait period till you get your booster so and the cdc did come out with new guidelines just yesterday as i said all things covered things are changing and we’re learning more you know as every week and month goes on but the cdc determined as of yesterday that after you have been back fully vaccinated so have your second dose of your vaccine then it takes two weeks for your body to develop enough immunity that we can say you’re you’re as immune you know as your body’s going to be so um three months after that um time period you don’t have to quarantine as long as you’re not symptomatic if you get exposed to someone with covet very cool uh are you call are the people called for the second dosage to make an appointment or is that appointment already set up very good question we set that appointment up at the when they come in to get their dose like today we give them a card we’re making them an appointment and you have a card that um this is when you’re coming back at a time and a date so we’ll see another uh viewer wants to know can you call in to register or do you have to fill out the form online is there a phone number to call or it’s best to just go to our website and fill out that like you said it’s called a survey but it’s just you know your interest to get the vaccine that way we can you know we have a record and then we can pull that you know like a spreadsheet and then we know we can pull it by age we can pull it by you know if they have an underlying health condition so you’re just better guaranteed to get the vaccine if you do that all right another viewer wants to know is it okay to fill out the survey more than once no that won’t help you on our website right you know so yeah yeah because you pull by your name another viewer wants to know how can you be sure that you are on the list well if you go in and fill out the information you’re on the list you’re on the list and you don’t you don’t drop off the list until you get the vaccination that’s correct that is correct all right guys we’re going to give mary joe’s voice uh just a bit of a rest so i can tell you about our sponsor tonight uh edlund the edlund team they also have a property management company and if you’re looking for a rental that would like to call home or if you own a rental property and would like to take the worry out of managing them off your plate give e3 property management a call at eight one six nine seven seven five or check out their website at e3 property management dot com again that’s one of brandon edlund’s companies thank you brandon for sponsoring tonight now mary jo i had a uh a question submitted i want to get to it and i i hope you’ll know the answer to this this person was asking about the the risk factors and that survey i think this was a survey on your side it might have been the state side but anyway this person wanted to know uh why are type 1 diabetics not considered on the higher priority of receiving the vaccine i guess the survey only mentioned type 2 diabetics this person says those who have type 1 are just as at risk if not more so than type 2 diabetics and are twice as likely to die from covet any thoughts on that you you familiar with why that is set up that way no you know the the state and the cdc you know established these um criteria so i’m sorry i i don’t know that we could maybe address that another night okay excellent uh let me see i had another question we had a lot of questions come in mary jo i don’t know um and and folks seem to think the newspaper has all the answers on i am not a doctor i just want to make that announcement i’m not a doctor though i do play one in my column occasionally in the newspaper but uh if the public wants to be frustrated right now because this has been a very frustrating thing i think for a lot of people as they watch like the mass vaccination events held in some of the less populated areas of missouri i know that’s one thing that’s that’s kind of bothered me and some other folks but if if we need to be frustrated right now who do who deserves the frustration is there anyone that deserves the frustration for this it’s a very shared responsibility i guess you know because as i keep saying you know um we’d all like to be angry at people down at you know the state level but um they’re only getting you know x amount of doses you know and they’re doing the best they can to try to disperse it you know throughout the state of missouri and so then it goes up the ladder to the you know operation warp speed to the feds you know it’s like why is missouri not getting more doses and and as i said you know that that has eeked up a little bit you know this week but um it’s just you know production of the vaccine so do you who do you want do you want to be angry at the vaccine producers at operation warp speed at the federal government at the state at me you know i mean everybody wants us over just as much as the next person yeah so and we do get a lot of misdirected anger i know a lot of folks have called the newspaper office expressing disappointment in the health department and i thought i think you know and we tell them the supply is the is the factor and uh it’s not you can’t just magically make vaccine appear in your office right we’ve even had people say to us at the health department um you know well you had enough money to buy that new building so why don’t you have enough money to buy vaccine that’s something i want to address we don’t buy the vaccine it’s provided by the federal government for free you know to the health department we don’t charge anybody you know for the vaccine this is this is our united states of america trying to end a pandemic so there’s no no cost to um you know for the vaccine to us or to the citizens so now have you heard of anyone having a problem a reaction a negative reaction to the shot itself is that not with uh not at our clinics um you know i’ve heard of it in the kansas city region all of us health directors you know we we have meetings ad nauseum you know throughout the week and we’ve heard of some folks that have had um you know some minor reactions but some people um you know it’s very anxiety producing for some people you know it’s like this is a novel virus it’s a brand new vaccine you know folks are worried you know how their body’s going to react to it but um we’ve we’ve not had any you know any issue you know with um of any vaccines that we’ve given excellent now do folks once they get the shot at one of your clinics do do they have to hang around for like 30 minutes or do you just explain that process yes yes so everyone has to um stay 15 minutes 15 minutes following their uh vaccination and then if you’ve had you know allergic reactions or reactions you know in your past we ask you to stay 30 minutes just just as a precautionary so interesting now have you heard back from folks who had the shot through your health department that they’ve had some side effects like say a fever or or any anything along those lines that you can talk about sure sure um a lot of times with your first dose of the vaccine really you get a sore arm you know and um then but with your second booster a lot of folks are just talking about really some mild flu-like symptoms maybe a little fever you know aches and chills some lethargy so feeling extra tired but really you should be happy that that’s going on that’s telling you your immune system is working and is you know it’s doing something within your body so it’s like just uh you know bear through that and typically it’s less than 24 48 hours you know that that people are experiencing that with their second dose so it’s good to know good to know um so another viewer wants to know does the health department need volunteers to assist at these events and if so what type volunteer what are you what are you looking for yes um well you know that’s an interesting thing i always say platte county is a wonderful place to work because you know you put out a cry for help and oh my goodness do they do they come from the all corners so we um put out a notice that we needed you know call for action whatever um a few weeks ago for volunteers to help us with vaccinations and we had to shut we had to pull that off our website in 24 hours we got over 150 volunteers so how awesome is that you know so kudos to platt county you know for for stepping up to that so right now what we’re asking people to do is if you really want to volunteer you go to the medical reserve corps of kansas city and you sign up the it’s the mrc they’re doing a fabulous job they vet the volunteers and then they put you in a database they actually have 800 people in their database to disperse volunteers throughout the kansas city region and then what we do is then we just you know call them and say hey we’re having two clinics this week right we need um you know five medical volunteers so that would be um nurses or doctors to actually administer the vaccine draw the vaccine up or be um during those 15 or 30 minutes while you’re waiting we have to have medical people you know monitoring you in case you know something untoward would happen so that’s what we need on the medical side and then we just need people you know out in the parking lot you know like today you know helping folks in from their car just people to guide people through our building saying you need to go this direction um just um people to be runners you know do whatever you know empty the trash you know relieve somebody for lunch you know just uh just all kinds of things so regardless of your skill set you know you can find something we can find work for everyone we can that’s funny now if someone has already experienced cova they’ve already fought coped and and do they still need to come in and get a vaccine good question as well yes they do you know your natural immunity um you know is per individual so we don’t know how long that’s going to last um what um you know they’ve the cdc has said thus far is that they think your natural immunity and they’ve measured it we know with uh testing that they’ve done over time with people that but your natural immunity lasts about three months but even though you’re less than three months out i’d highly encourage you just to go ahead and get the vaccine it just increases your chances to be protected from the virus so and everyone who has been vaccinated still needs to do the social distancing and the mask wearing and and that sort of thing talk about that a little bit yes you know you just got to look at it that you know these are um arsenals that we have it’s you know defense mechanisms that we have to try to prevent this fact this virus from spreading so as i said before it’s just not time to stand down and start relaxing you know all of these uh methods that we have to to prevent the spread of the infection so um you know and also the virus hasn’t been around long enough i know people are tired of hearing that but you know so after you get the vaccine it’s not well known whether you could still then be asymptomatic still maybe have the virus within your your body and we all know that asymptomatic people have spread the virus you know throughout the last year so it’s just best um and the cdc is is asking us to just encourage people keep wearing those masks keep staying six feet apart and you know just to try to prevent that and you know if you look you know hospitals are um i heard a pediatrician say last week that he’s never seen a year where they have such low incidence of rsv that’s a respiratory virus for little kids well we’re all we’re all trying to protect each other so it’s it’s being you know that’s a side effect you know it’s being helpful beneficial to not make people sick with other you know things that are running around spreading you know so the flu numbers down too yes yes yeah interesting so we uh any more questions coming in from viewers i want to get to many of those as i can kudos to the platte county health department very agreed with that mary jo is it too early to tell if this is going to be a one-time vaccination and you you’re protected forever or is it going to have to be an annual thing like the flu shot is an annual thing or do we know that yet i’ve heard you know dr fauci and the head of the cdc i’ve heard them you know kind of getting us prepared that you know they feel that it’s more than likely going to be an annual you know vaccination that we have to get so um it’s just you know yet to be you know learned from all the experts you know whether um whether that’s going to be for sure the case i i heard um i believe last night on the national news um this head of the cdc was saying that you know the vaccine companies are even already trying to do testing to to um create within the vaccine a prolonged immunity so you know it’s just stay tuned yeah absolutely hey everybody you’re watching landmark live it’s a production of the platte county landmark newspaper we’ve got some new technology we’re trying out tonight guys i hope it’s working well because uh you know we’ve had a tech guy up here helping us all day long and we just hope everything’s going smoothly but you never know with technology it’s kind of like an unpredictable virus another question you had from a viewer uh are we using the national guard here locally any uh um we have not yet you know the states kind of um in charge of that and what they’re doing is they’ve dispatched the national guard to some of those smaller rural communities that we spoke of earlier and they send a team of about 30 guardsmen out and actually set up a vaccination site you know at but they usually are working in concert with a a local health department so um we haven’t had that in our area just yet so gotcha then uh you’re kind of eyeballing perhaps the first week of march for a potential mass vaccination event in riverside that’s your hope it sounded like earlier right yes yes and you know you know we were talking today you know what if we just have two or three hundred doses a week you know we’re going to go ahead and still stand that up so that we we will be ready to um administer thousands of vaccine once that that flow starts happening from the manufacturers because as with everything covered you know it usually happens pretty rapid you know it’s like the change this week things you know vaccines started you know becoming more available so we don’t want to wait until oh well you could have gotten you know right 4 000 doses this week but you weren’t ready so we want to be ready so always ready so have you had to add staff members during all this craziness and how’s that working out are you are you getting enough rest is the staff getting enough rest do you have enough help i guess is the question yeah well we’ve um the only staff that we’ve hired on additionally was for the contact racing and the disease investigation you know as our numbers just were skyrocketing for weeks and months there was just no way i only have one epidemiology specialist and was camera shy but you know we had to bring in folks so that we could get a hold of people and give them their test results and give them the instructions of what to do so other than that you know my staff’s just been double timing it you know public health workers are just they’re great you know they don’t sign up for the fame you know they sign up to protect the community so we’ve kind of minimized some of our clinic hours last summer we had to pretty much you know with doing testing we had to really minimize our vaccine clinics for other you know diseases so like back to school shots so then when it got closer to you know to school starting time we you know we had to uh do some some fancy work to try to get all the kids vaccinated you know before they went back to school for all the all the childhood immunizations yeah we had a question coming about teachers where do teachers rank on the uh phase list the tier they’ll be in the next next group you know and that’s a big dilemma you know across the state i know you know that um desi department of uh elementary and secondary education i know they’re communicating with the missouri department of health and the governor you know to try to get teachers vaccinated so schools have just done a fabulous job i meet my couple of my staff members and i meet with our all of our school superintendents weekly to try to you know stay in touch with them and help give them guidance you know so that they can do everything that they can to keep as many kids as possible in school so it’ll be great when we can vaccinate those those teachers so and i i know some of the school districts have been lucky enough to have a private partnership develop so that’s obviously helpful uh i know i think park hill has one for sure i don’t know if ply county r3 does but they’re they’re both um working with um the north kansas city hospital set up um but we have to adhere to these tiers that have been set by the state department of health so much so that you know if we go outside to that tier we could get our vaccine allotment you know minimize so they’ve they’ve aligned you know the tears and the phases of who were to vaccine vaccinate you know during this time period and we’re not allowed to go outside of that until we get permission from the state so um i know that both those school districts are working you know with the hospital to try to get their teachers vaccinated but we have to wait to get the word from the state to to open that up to them gotcha hey everybody thanks for tuning in you’re watching landmark live it’s a production of the platte county landmark newspaper i’m ivan foley our guest tonight is mary jo vern and she’s the director of the platte county health department uh mary jo someone you were asked if you would review one more time the county residents vaccinate review those numbers like give us i think you said seven percent right right um so um per the missouri state department health website seven thousand six hundred and sixty one platte countians have received their first dose and twenty eight hundred platt canyons have received their second dose and that equates to seven point three percent of our population and they even break it down that in the last seven days a little over 2500 platt county people have received a shot in the last seven days so so you’re making progress yes yes slow but sure right have you uh heard from folks who uh expressed some some doubts about receiving the vaccine i mean is there some considers considerations that they might not want the vaccine and if so what’s what are the fears yes um i think it’s just the fears are because the vaccine is new you know people are worried that it hasn’t been studied or researched enough um but i think um we’ve seen some the numbers have changed it was like about 50 percent of people said yes i’ll definitely get the vaccine this is across missouri and across the kansas city area and then another 30 percent said well i might i might get it but i’m going to wait you know wait and see and then um the other 20 is just like absolutely not no way but we did hear from um i’ll leave out who it was but it was an an entity that provides medical care today said that um a month ago they had a little over 50 percent of their employees that said they would get the vaccine and as of today it was 80 wow so i think there’s getting to be some comfort level you know with people you know those of us who have gotten the vaccine you know we haven’t had untoward effects you know and you know i i understand their caution and their concern but you know you gotta weigh the concern over that over the concern of you know getting the virus and making a loved one ill like i talked about earlier i mean it’s just it’s not just about self you know it’s about people people that we are with you know on a daily basis so yeah well very good mary jo we appreciate you coming on tonight now one more question you’ve i know you’ve watched landmark live previously so uh chris campbell and i thought we’d had the idea that if we ever come up on the phase list on the tier list we would like to get the shot live on air so is that something that we could arrange just to show folks that it’s safe and hopefully painless and yeah can we do that with the health department um well it would have to be we definitely we would do that but we um you know once we open a vial the vaccine has to be used within five hours so um you’d have to be we’ll do a daytime show if you’re okay all right we’ll sure we’ll make it happen we’d love to do that chris kamler write that down man be prepared be ready when that phone rings we got to go get a shot but uh chris is a little bit younger than me so i i actually might come up on the list beforehand maybe we could we could do a show just for me getting the shot and chris could do the play-by-play or something any other questions coming in all right guys hey mary jo thank you so much for doing this we’ve had so much interest in so many calls to the paper and emails to the paper with questions and and when i reached out you were very happy to do this and i think we’ll do it again some kind of setup maybe we can uh involve other folks then uh just do a question and answer session i’ll be honest i think that would be great because like you said people are so curious about this they have questions and you know we’re busy doing the work of public health every day but i think it’d be great to have like a panel discussion and have a little q a with you know with your readership or watchership yeah and you know just have some good interaction so that we can allay some fears and answer questions we’d be happy to do that oh we’ll do it and we have the technology to do that remotely if we have to so we could just okay we can just go to town we have a new tech person working so hey we can we can do all kinds of magical things now but guys thank you for tuning in i know we got another question coming in and while the question is coming in i got to tell you once again about our sponsor the edlund team real estate agency the spring market is here if you’re thinking about buying or selling your home we can help we offer great customer service and since we work as a team you will have dedicated service from not only your agent but the entire team we would love to help you sell your current home or find your dream home give the edlund team a call 816-858-6002 or check them out at the edlundteam.com thank you brandon and jennifer for sponsoring the show tonight question so is the question can can your name be removed from the list is that if you’ve already had the shot you don’t need to do that we’ll we’ll take care of that for you once you’ve received the shot you’re you know you’re not on the list what if they receive the shot somewhere else oh oh somewhere else yeah weed up um good question but something we would need to know um i’ll look into that and we’ll talk about it putting that on the next time or putting something on our website about that that’s a very good subject to bring up to us so thank you great all right everybody hey thanks for tuning in we’ll be back soon with another show in the meantime thank you mary jo for coming on we’ll do it again and we’ll see you guys next time thank you for tuning in