Sometimes, when life sets up a literal roadblock, you just have to improvise and hope for the best. This was the case when a group of health workers with doses of the COVID-19 vaccine got stuck in a snowstorm on a highway in Oregon. If you do not want the doses to expire, they applied it to motorists who got stuck in the snow.
Josephine County Public Health staff held a mass vaccination event at Illinois Valley High School in Cave Junction, Oregon. After a successful event, the team had six doses left to deliver to the recipients in the Grants Pass. Unfortunately, the team will not make it to Grants Pass because a snowstorm has stuck them on Highway 199 near Hayes Hill.
To make matters worse, the vaccines would expire before they reached their destination.
But the workers did not want to expire good vaccines, and with an ambulance at hand, they set up an improvised road clinic. JCPH staff went from car to car to give stranded motorists the chance to get the COVID-19 vaccine. Eventually, the six doses were successfully administered, taking the best out of a bad situation. One of the recipients was even a person who could not arrive at the high school on time for the original event.
I love this story. Being trapped in a blizzard is a horrible situation. You can go nowhere and you have no idea when you will finally be up and running again. It’s even worse if you’re a healthcare professional trying to give a vaccine before it expires. But these people immediately jumped into action to make sure no dose was lost.
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To add to the embellishment on top of this feel-good story, Mike Weber, director of the health department, said the situation was one of the coolest surgeries he has participated in.