BOZEMAN, Mont. – Gallatin County will receive more doses of a coronavirus vaccine next week for frontline health care workers.
Health Officer Matt Kelley said the Gallatin City-County Health Department will get 500 to 1,000 doses and will distribute them to health care workers not affiliated with Bozeman Health or Community Health Partners, two local health care organizations that received and are administering their own vaccine shipments from the federal government.
The health department is now finalizing plans for distributing the upcoming shipment, Kelley said.
The department is still administering the 300 doses of the Moderna vaccine it received last week for school nurses and home health workers.
Local long-term care facilities began receiving vaccines this week from national pharmaceutical companies. The Gallatin Rest Home announced Wednesday it had immunized the majority of its residents and staff.
“This is a big step moving toward the reopening of the nursing home to visitors,” said Darcel Vaughn, the home’s administrator.
Vaccinating health care workers and residents at long-term care facilities is the first phase of a four-part distribution plan for the state, which began in early December and estimates the general public will start being vaccinated in July.
The second phase, labeled 1B, expands vaccinations to include adults over 75, teachers, grocery store workers, people living in group settings, first responders and Native Americans and other people of color who may be at an elevated risk for COVID-19 complications.
The state estimates phase 1B could begin in mid-January, which Kelley said he thinks is realistic.
However, “a lot of it is going to depend on vaccine supply,” he said. “The biggest variable we have is how much vaccine we can get.”
The health department is working with the state to implement tracking software to help officials manage vaccinations and let individuals know when they can and how to get the vaccine.
The ongoing vaccination efforts come as Gallatin County is seeing a slight uptick in COVID-19 cases after weeks of declining case numbers.
On Wednesday, the county reported 162 new cases and added 88 on Thursday, the highest single-day totals recorded since mid-December.
Kelley said some of the recent increase is due to reporting delays from the new surveillance testing program in Big Sky. Even though it has taken some time for the Big Sky cases to appear in the health department database, Kelley said the town’s testing program has still conducted contact tracing in a timely manner.
Hospitalizations have inched into the teens on some days this week.
The positivity rate has risen above 10% after dipping below that threshold last week, an indication that the county may not be doing enough testing and the disease is widespread.
Kelley cautioned against reading too much into the recent data. He said the health department is focused on long-term trends rather than a single day.
“We are seeing a rebound, (but) I don’t want to overreact to that,” he said.
On Thursday, the health department announced the death of a man in his 90s from COVID-19. The man died in a hospital the week of Dec. 13.
His death brings the countywide total since the pandemic began to 38.
“While the arrival of COVID-19 vaccines in Gallatin County provides a light at the end of the tunnel, we still have a long way to go,” Kelley said. “But Montanans can do this.”
