Boarding a Great Lakes freighter in the Soo Locks to deliver 5 doses of COVID vaccine
May 13, 2021 08:16AM ● By Editor
By Robin Erb of The Bridge Michigan - May 12, 2021
In hard hats and safety vests, the two women shimmy up aluminum boarding ladders onto a converted World War II tanker.
The rumble of the ship’s 8,040-horsepower engine makes conversation near-impossible on this blue sky morning. But public health workers Charity Zimmerman, a nurse, and Jill Schaefer, a clerk, know the drill on these steel giants that travel through the Soo Locks, the iconic commercial squeeze point between lakes Huron and Superior.
The bright colors of their vests are a startling contrast Wednesday to the red-brown steel of the M/V Lee A. Tregurtha, an 826-foot-long vessel headed to the Marquette docks to load iron ore.
The women sidestep cables and cargo holds and make their way through narrow steel-framed hallways. For about an hour, a sparsely-furnished rec room serves as a pop-up COVID-19 vaccination clinic. They unzip a blue tote of first-dose Moderna vaccines, pull out paperwork, and go to work.
There is little time for chit-chat.
“It’s deadline, deadline and deadline,” First Mate Aaron McLauchlan said of round-the-clock work aboard a lake freighter. “A minute lost here and there turns into hours and days.”
It didn’t take long: Just five crew members signed up for vaccine doses.
Five.
It’s an extreme example of the day-to-day battle that public health workers are now waging across Michigan to vaccinate hard-to-reach residents amid an ongoing health crisis.
“Initially, there was an initial push for vaccines,” Schaefer said. “Now we’re getting those calls one at a time, and scheduling them one at a time.”
Across the state, health workers face logistical complexities as they try to connect with the most isolated, the hard-to-convince, and — in the case of Tregurtha’s cook, Matt Dillinger — the hard-to-find-time.
Like many, Dillinger works on the ship for weeks at a time.
“I don’t consider myself a high-risk person, so I was content to let others get theirs,” said Dillinger, 40, of Sandusky, Ohio. “Now I’m getting paid to get it. It’s right here, and so why not?”
Late last month, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer tied a promise to lift state pandemic restrictions to a boost in residents getting their COVID vaccines. Michigan hit its first milestone Monday, when 55 percent of Michiganders age 16 had received their first dose, triggering a lifting of remote work requirements within two weeks.
When 70 percent of Michiganders receive at least one dose of a COVID vaccine under the plan, mask requirements and other broad restrictions will be lifted.
But just how quickly that will happen remains uncertain.
Michigan put about 376,000 vaccines a week into arms in early April, the peak of vaccinations. But that number has dropped by more than half — to just 180,000 the last week of April, the most recent week for which there is complete data.
Vaccination rates vary widely across regions, with nearly 70 percent of those 16 and older in Leelanau County having gotten at least one dose, compared to just 33.2 percent in the state’s largest city, Detroit.
Seven Michigan counties are over 60 percent vaccinated — yet eight others are below 40 percent.
After months of waiting lists for limited doses of vaccines, officials now find there are more vials than local residents who want them, or can get to a clinic that administers them.
“We were on a steady pace on the track to 55 percent,” said Norm Hess, executive director of the Michigan Association for Local Public Health, which represents the state’s 45 local health departments. But getting to 70 percent vaccinated “ is going to take different strategies.”
Outreach efforts that for months have been led by public health nurses and the medical community will now shift to local community organizations; trusted groups that hope to leverage long-term relationships to reach “the people left behind,” said Becky Cienki of Michigan Health Endowment Fund.
To read the original article and read related public health reporting, follow this link to the Bridge Michigan website. https://www.bridgemi.com/michigan-health-watch/boarding-freighter-soo-locks-deliver-5-doses-covid-va...
