The Provo hospital is trying to deliver 1,900 doses of COVID-19 vaccine by Friday

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The doses of the Pfizer vaccine will not be lost, a Utah County Health department spokeswoman said.

(Courtesy University of Utah Health) A vial of the Pfizer / BioNTech version of the COVID-19 vaccine.

February 11, 2021, 11:56 PM

Updated: February 12, 2021, 1:11 a.m.

A Provo hospital has about 1,900 doses of the COVID-19 vaccine it needs to get into people’s arms, stat.

Officials at Utah Valley Hospital in Provo have informed neighboring counties that if there are people 70 or older who can be in Provo by Friday afternoon, an injection of the Pfizer vaccine will be available to them.
People can sign up for an appointment by going to the Utah County Health Department website: https://healthevents.utahcounty.gov/.
Lance Madigan, spokesman for Intermountain Healthcare, said the hospital had scheduled appointments for Utah County residents to take the recordings, but many slots were not filled.

“We don’t know if everyone who wants it already has it, or if it’s a technology problem – because it is [people] 70 plus and we ask people to register [online] before they come, ”said Madigan.

Aislynn Tolman-Hill, a spokeswoman for the Utah County Health Department, said her agency has noticed declining appointment numbers for the vaccine over the past week. “We’re actually starting to see that we’re reaching the end of the crowd of 70 and older that we’re trying to get vaccinated,” she said.

Utah County, Tolman-Hill said, also has some of the ‘hesitation in the vaccine’ – people who want to ‘see what happens, how everyone is doing’ before getting the shot themselves.

Nicholas Rupp, a spokesman for the Salt Lake County Health Department, said his office was aware of the available doses on Thursday. The Salt Lake County agency began calling people on vaccine waiting lists asking if any of them could drive to Provo and get a chance.

The hospital staff in Provo, Madigan said, was “just preparing enough to meet the demand so we would have as little waste as possible. … We will devise a process. These are not dumped. “

“They don’t take doses from the freezer unless they know they’ve already made those arrangements,” said Tolman-Hill.

The Pfizer vaccine needs to be stored at super cold temperatures, and pharmacists usually only thaw vials when they know the vaccine will be used.

Rupp said officials at his agency were discussing moving the doses of Provo to a vaccination site in Salt Lake County. They chose the move, said Rupp, “because we are already at full capacity with the people we have and everything we have going on [Friday and Saturday] on our current sites. “

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