Sitka Vaccinates Whole Communities

Sitka, Alaska's civic center, looks different from many in the lower 48 states, wrote Katerine Rose with NPR. There are no lines and no crowds. Patients arrive every few minutes for their COVID-19 vaccination appointments. 

They don't have to wait very long before a nurse directs them to roll up their sleeves.

Dr. Elliot Bruhl, the chief medical officer at the Southeast Alaska Regional Health Consortium in Sitka, says health workers can vaccinate around 750 people each week. The public health goal is vaccinating whole communities, Alaska Native people and non-Native residents alike.

"As these (COVID-19) vaccines came, we saw it as a moral and ethical imperative that we did not leave vaccines sitting in the freezer," says Dr. Bruhl. 

Bruhl says they received enough supply of the vaccine from both the state and the Indian Health Service (IHS), and the IHS has been extremely efficient in getting vaccines out, reported Rose.