SALT LAKE, Utah – An 86-year-old Utah woman received a call late at night that ended up being given a COVID-19 vaccine.
It was a call Mary Ann Kershisnik wasn’t expecting, but one she received with open arms.
“I don’t feel like, you know, trapped like a lot of people,” she said. “But it is still very different.”
Kershisnik has remained optimistic during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“None of us got COVID from my friends,” she said. “A lot of people in the area do, but the older group, we are sure, has done well in that regard, so we are very curious about our photos.
The 86-year-old great-grandmother’s prayers were answered two weeks ago.
“I watched KSL News at 10pm,” said Kershisnik. Then the phone rang with an unexpected offer that made her run out the door.
It was a call from the Community Nursing Services, which works on behalf of providing vaccines to some schools and long-term care facilities.
Community Nursing Services is involved in the distribution of vaccines throughout health districts and the state; educators in Salt Lake County, Weber, Morgan. We also partner with long-term state care facilities that do not receive service through a federal partnership with CVS, ”said Cory Fowlks, Community Nursing Services spokesperson. “No dose is wasted or expired. Every effort is made to ensure that each dose is given to individuals after masked immunizations. “
And at the end of the day they had extra vaccines.
“[I think] they did a school district. When they were done, they had an overtly mean one with some doses left and they had to be done by 1 am, ”said Kershisnik. “I think there were five left.”
Instead of letting them go to waste, they gave Kershisnik the chance to drive in and get the vaccine.
“So we went to get the vaccine at 11pm,” she said. ‘I loved it. Rather than not taking those doses, they tried to find people who would like them. We were, we were over the moon. “
The Davis and Salt Lake County Health Department administers their own COVID-19 vaccine doses.
Davis County officials said they have expanded their workforce to treat patients at the Legacy Events Center in Farmington, where patients are “in and out of the building” within five minutes.
“We are strategic with our end-of-day planning to make sure we don’t have any leftover doses. We are discussing making a kind of waiting list, but at the moment we have no such thing. Nor have we had to throw away vaccines that had not been used by the time, ”said Trevor Warner, Davis County Health Department spokesman.
Salt Lake County health department officials said their vaccination sites at the Mountain America Expo Center and Maverik Center are working well.
County spokesman Nicholas Rupp said no vaccines have expired and none have been thrown away. They have a waiting list for no show appointments so as not to waste vaccines.
The Utah Health Department reports that they have about 95 vaccines that have been discarded statewide. UDOH spokesperson Charla Haley said, “Most were due to broken bottles or syringes. Several were administration errors in dose preparation. “