Health workers in Oregon who got stuck in a snowstorm on Tuesday began administering residual coronavirus vaccines to motorists along the road, rather than wasting the doses, local officials said.
Josephine County Public Health staff and volunteers were leaving a vaccination clinic at Illinois Valley High School, about 100 miles south of Eugene, when a storm stranded them and many others on Highway 199.
The group kept six doses of Covid-19 vaccine in the clinic, which they wanted to administer at the nearby Grants Pass, but the snow prevented them from reaching the city before the prepared doses would expire.
“Because they did not want to waste any doses, dedicated staff members of JCPH started walking from car to car, giving stranded motorists the chance to receive the vaccine,” the health department said in a Facebook post on Tuesday.
About 20 health workers and volunteers were part of the group, including Christi Siedlecki, whose family had just finished the volunteers at the vaccine and then saw the pop-up clinic along the way.
Siedlecki told NBC News: “I saw them going car after car in that horrible weather.” “I felt grateful that they worked so hard not to waste a single dose of vaccine, even in such dire circumstances.”
All six vaccines have been successfully administered to those trapped in the snow, including one to an employee of the Sheriff’s Office in Josephine County, Josephine County Public Health said.
“It’s important for people to know how dedicated healthcare workers are to getting every dose into people,” Siedlecki said. “My community should be so proud. I am.”