Massachusetts has trained community volunteers on how to dispense vaccines since 2001; So why aren’t they being used?
Updated Mar 02, 2021;
Almost two decades before the COVID-19 pandemic, communities in Massachusetts began training locals to help during an emergency health situation, including how to dispense vaccines.
Since 2001, the state helped fund local communities to identify more than 603 primary and back-up Emergency Dispensing Sites (EDS), formed 45 Medical Reserve Corps (MRC) units, and recruited thousands of clinical and non-clinical volunteers statewide, according to the training manual. Those volunteers are trained on things such as preparing for a vaccine that would be administered through “two doses of vaccine separated by at least three weeks” to about 80% of the population and proper vaccine storage in a refrigerator.