LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- Teachers and staff in at least five Kentucky school districts have received their first doses of COVID-19 vaccine weeks ahead of schedule as health departments work to exhaust their allocations.
Teachers and school employees at Ballard County Schools, Warren County Public Schools, Bowling Green Independent School District, Taylor County Schools and Campbellsville Independent Schools have been offered COVID-19 vaccines as of Tuesday, according to the Kentucky Department of Education.
Toni Konz Tatman, KDE’s chief communications officer, said in an email Tuesday that the agency does not track how many educators and support staff have received vaccinations thus far “because the situation is fluid based on the availability of vaccines in different counties.”
More than 81,000 educators and support staff throughout Kentucky have signed up for COVID-19 vaccinations, according to KDE. School workers are included in the second phase of the state’s vaccination schedule, which is expected to begin around Feb. 1.
Kent Koster, public health director for the Purchase District Health Department, said Ballard County allowed vaccinations for educators and school staff after administering doses to everyone in the first group of recipients, which included health professionals and those working and living in long-term care facilities.
Of Ballard County’s allocation of 100 doses, 40 were unused after the first round of vaccinations. Koster said rather than letting those doses sit in storage, the health department opened vaccinations for school personnel late last week.
The health department was able to cover about half of the Ballard County Schools staff who had previously signed up for COVID-19 vaccinations, he said.
“The philosophy is that a shot in the arm’s a whole lot better than a dose in the refrigerator,” Koster said in an interview Tuesday.
Directors of the Barren River District Health Department and Lake Cumberland District Health Department did not immediately return messages seeking comment.
One conundrum for health departments, particularly those that serve counties with small populations, is that COVID-19 vaccines are shipped in set amounts.
PDHD received Moderna’s vaccine, which comes in 100-dose shipments, Koster said. Ballard, Carlisle, Fulton and Hickman counties each received 100 vaccine doses while McCracken County got 200 doses, he said.
Many health departments have grappled with how to administer excess vaccine doses, he said.
“It was a matter of do we let it sit in the refrigerator or do we put it in people’s arms and whose arms do we put it in, the 70-plus or school personnel,” Koster said, referring to residents 70 and older who are also included in the next group of the state’s vaccination schedule.
Dr. Connie White, deputy commissioner of the Kentucky Department for Public Health, said the state's distribution of COVID-19 vaccines will accelerate as production increases.
Kentucky receives about 53,000 vaccine doses per week, she said during a Tuesday webinar with school superintendents throughout the state.
"We only have this much to give, and we're trying to find a way that we can spread that as equitably across the state as we can," White said. "That's just not going to make anybody happy because people that aren't getting it are not going to be happy. People that are getting it are unhappy that they're not getting all that they want, and I just can't fix that."
Evolving distribution details have caused some confusion. Koster said the state initially cautioned health departments against inoculating school personnel with excess vaccine doses, then later said such decisions could be made locally.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended Tuesday that states expand vaccine eligibility to those 65 and older.
Koster said he does not fault anyone for the complexities involved in developing a vaccine distribution plan.
“You’ve got so many different people and parties who have an interest in this that are trying to direct the health departments and the states to do certain things, and you’ve got committees and vaccination committees that are getting all kinds of requests and they’re trying to filter through all the different reasoning of why you need to do this and why you don’t need to do that, and all of that changes depending upon what’s interjected into that conversation and into that thought process,” he said.
“It’s not as definitive as everybody wants it to be.”
Speaking to superintendents Tuesday, Kentucky Department for Public Health Commissioner Dr. Steven Stack said he had envisioned partnering with large, commercial partners and retail pharmacies so each county could have a designated location for COVID-19 vaccinations.
“Local control stepped in immediately and made that a pipe dream,” he said.
While school systems have good relationships with their local health departments, Stack said that “makes it much harder now to operationalize across all these different health departments that each have different infrastructure.”
The process of developing and implementing a vaccination plan “because a very painful and laborious 120-county-at-a-time project to make a custom-built program for each and every one of the counties,” he said.
“Some have in-school nurses,” he said. “Others do not. Some rely on partners like federally qualified health care centers. Others do not. Some don’t have the resources and the infrastructure, and I still have to come up with a solution using a commercial pharmacy.”
Based on the early start to vaccinating teachers and staff in some areas of the state, Stack expects the first round of vaccinations to be complete by mid-February followed by booster shots four weeks later.
He said he hoped to provide a general vaccine schedule by county by the end of the week.
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