County officials: Virus vaccine doses to arrive next week

Hours before a federal advisory panel signed off on emergency use of a COVID-19 vaccine Thursday, Cape Girardeau County officials discussed distribution plans for the county.

Mark Winkler, the county's emergency management director, told county commissioners Southeast Hospital will be the reception site for Pfizer's vaccine doses. He said officials expect the first doses of the vaccine to arrive as early as Tuesday. The hospital is expected to receive 1,000 doses, which will need to be distributed within a 12-hour period because of handling protocols requiring the doses be kept at extremely low temperatures.

Health care workers will receive first priority in receiving the doses.

CVS and Walgreens will provide vaccine doses at the county's long-term care facilities, as directed by the state's Department of Health and Senior Services.

Winkler noted the process has occurred rapidly in recent weeks and not all decisions have been finalized.

"If it does culminate in everybody needing to drive to Cape Girardeau, those decisions, as far as I know, haven't been made yet. What is today? Dec. 10, and we're gonna see the vaccine in five days? We need to start making some decisions relatively soon. It sounds like we're going to be expecting a rash of phone calls, in the next couple days, at least from Southeast Hospital talking about all the planning issues that we just raised here," he told commissioners. "So, yeah, we got a lot of questions to get answered, and the sooner we can get those answers the better we'll all be. So we can help with resources or personnel or whatever they need from us."

J.C. Reeves contributed reporting for this story.