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MEDINA, Ohio – In an effort to fully open up personal classrooms, the Governor’s Office, the superintendents of all Medina County schools, the Medina County Health Department, and Discount Drug Mart teamed up to create a one-day COVID-19 vaccination clinic. to be organized for all educators and school staff of the province.
All provincial schools were closed Thursday (Feb. 4) to allow 1,800 teachers and staff to receive Pfizer vaccinations at Medina High School. Another 1,500 were vaccinated at Brunswick High School.
Dr. Robert Hlasko, Superintendent of Medina County Educational Service Center, explained that Medina County was one of the first in the state to receive the vaccinations. He attributed this fact to the weekly meetings district superintendents have held with the health department since the outbreak of the pandemic last spring.
That partnership allowed the county to assure the governor that they had a plan and were willing to implement it as soon as vaccines became available.
Discount Drug Mart provided the platform for educators to register and schedule the vaccines. Early in the week, eligible teachers received a schedule link for the clinic, which opened at 7 a.m. and ran until 5 p.m.
Jason Briscoe, Discount Drug Mart’s director of pharmacy operations, said the company’s 76 pharmacies in Ohio administered 30,000 COVID-19 vaccinations to age-appropriate citizens in the past 14 days.
He said the pharmacists who gave the injections at Medina High School came from pharmacies around the area and had probably worked 12 hours a day on Wednesday before heading to the clinic on Thursday.
Medina City Schools Superintendent Aaron Sable spoke of the difficulty of staffing the schools during the pandemic. Sable said the biggest challenge is quarantining students and staff exposed to the coronavirus.
He spoke tongue in cheek of his lack of experience: “This is my first pandemic and first vaccination clinic.”
He said that although 80 percent of school workers will now be protected by the vaccine, and while there has been little to no spread of the virus within schools, the district will continue to follow strict protocols, including safe social distancing and wearing masks.
Employees who arrived at Medina High School for their vaccinations were referred to the gym, where they were checked in and assigned to one of the various pharmacists who administered the vaccine.
One pharmacist estimated that he gave an injection every three minutes.
After each person got his or her vaccine, they moved to the top section of the gym, where they sat for 15 minutes before being excused. This was to watch for a response to the immunization.
Due to HIPAA restrictions and in the interest of the media, Melanie Condosta, a physical education teacher at AI Root Middle School, volunteered to get her vaccination in a separate classroom. Pharmacist Megan Levitt of the Cuyahoga Falls Drug Mart administered the shot.
“The shot didn’t hurt at all,” Condosta said. “This pandemic has been severe; it has been an emotional rollercoaster. I think everyone is happy to be back in school. “
The county schools will be closed for another day after about 27 days so that the second admission in the Pfizer series can be administered. Because previous recipients have reported mild side effects from the second dose of Pfizer, the vaccine will likely be given on Fridays to give staff time to rest on weekends.
Consider the benefits of that one day of vaccinations: Hopefully none of the 3,300 school employees will contract COVID-19. In a ripple effect, none of those people will infect others with the virus, no one will be hospitalized, students will be allowed back to class with their friends, parents will go back to work – and life can go on pre-pandemic seem normalcy for families in Medina County.
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