St. Cloud VA Medical Center Quickly Vaccinating Veterans and Staff Against COVID-19

(KNSI) – As more mass vaccination clinics start to pop up around the state, the St. Cloud VA Medical Center is ahead of the game. Public Affairs Officer Barry Venable tells KNSI’s Bob Hughes their drive-through flu shot clinics built the model for COVID-19 vaccinations as supplies ramp up.

“As we set today, we have received in total 13,000 doses of vaccine, and we have given out 12,556 doses. So the model we’ve built that that grew out of that influenza effort last fall, has proven productive, and frankly, quite valuable.”

Those remaining doses will be used as second doses for those that need to receive them this week.

The Minnesota Department of Health has come under fire for its slow pace of vaccinations, so much so, the state had to make a rule that if one provider didn’t meet the vaccination numbers goal within a certain number of days, its allotment would be taken away and given to another provider.

The doses the St. Cloud VA gets, according to Chief of Pharmacy JD Anderson, are used within a day or two.

“We receive notice on Wednesday or Thursday the week before our shipment arrives. And when that when that last situation occurred, when we got a larger surplus than we were used to, we quickly adapted and changed our model to accommodate all of those doses and they were all gone in seven days. So we’ve effectively executed a model where we’re getting first doses on a Monday or a Tuesday and they are exhausted by next Monday or Tuesday and, and same with our second dose as they arrive on a Tuesday or Wednesday, and we’re using those within the next week as well. So we really feel like we’re hitting our stride and that we’re executing the model that we’ve been testing and all throughout this effort.”

The VA Healthcare System is relatively insulated from vaccine shortages elsewhere as their allotment system is separate, but Anderson says, taking the 30,000-foot view of the situation, this is a monumental effort by manufacturers and the government to roll this out and have a vaccine ready less than a year after the first case was diagnosed in Minnesota.

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