Cape Cod Community College
BARNSTABLE – The Cape Cod COVID-19 Response Task Force has announced the establishment of the Cape Cod Regional Vaccine Consortium.
It will expand vaccination infrastructure across Cape Cod, beginning with the addition of a vaccination site at Cape Cod Community College.
The consortium is a collaborative of health care providers, county government and municipalities across the Cape that aims to deliver vaccine doses to the region’s most vulnerable residents.
Cape Cod Healthcare will run the new vaccination site at 4C’s, leveraging their experience running other sites such as the Melody Tent in Hyannis.
The site could open as soon as next week.
“We’re playing our part at the community college. It’s an important part. We’re proud to do it, and it will be efficient and it will be high-volume. When the doses come, we will be able to administer them,” said Michael Lauf, Cape Cod Healthcare CEO and President.
The site will soon join the state’s standard sign-up process, as per requirements of the regional collaboratives announced recently by Governor Charlie Baker, of which Barnstable County is a part.
Cape & Islands State Senator Julian Cyr said that vaccine supplies are still limited, but the infrastructure will be there for when dose shipments increase.
As part of the requirements for the regional collaboration with the state, potential vaccine sites must be able to administer at least 750 vaccines per day.
“We’re currently doing a thousand a day at the Melody Tent. We feel that we can easily achieve this number pending vaccines coming from the state,” said Lauf.
“The good news is that has started to flow.”
Karen Gardner, CEO of Community Health Center of Cape Cod—a member of the Consortium—said that efforts continue to vaccinate residents wherever possible, including continuing their coordinated effort with towns to vaccinate homebound residents, which Cape-wide number around 2,500 total.
With the new consortium, task force members said that vaccination efficiency will vastly improve.
“Basically what this consortium does is it takes this all-hands-on-deck approach. We had to do it for testing, we’re doing it now for vaccinations, and this is going to help us out quite a bit with getting more shots in arms across the Cape. That’s really the priority right now for all of us,” said Sean O’Brien, Director of the Barnstable County Department of Health and Environment.
Cyr said that the consortium and task force still have their work cut out for them in getting all of those eligible in Phase 1 and the beginning of Phase 2 vaccinated using current supply restraints and such a comparatively high senior population in Barnstable County when compared to elsewhere in Massachusetts.
Currently, all residents age 65 and older and those with two or more certain medical conditions are eligible for the vaccine.
Cyr said that the task force and the new consortium will continue to reach out to the most vulnerable demographics and those who have been disproportionately impacted by the virus across the region, including communities of color, those with disabilities, those lacking transport and the Cape’s seasonal worker population.
Vaccine shipment from the state level will continue to dictate how many appointments will be available for residents, said Cyr.
More information on the vaccination effort on Cape Cod can be found here.
About Grady Culhane
