He explained that between the health department staff at state clinics, doses offered through hospital and pharmacy partners, medical reserve corps volunteers stepping up to administer shots, and now the help from EMTs who in time should be making roving visits to homebound seniors there has never been a vaccination campaign so large or complex.
Vendors are also part of the vaccine rollout, Batsie noted, and state employees from departments aside from the health department are lending a hand at the vaccination sites in support roles such as check-in or traffic control.
“What we are trying to figure out is how to utilize every bit of resource that we have, to be able to do this as quickly as possible,” Batsie said of Vermont’s approach to COVID-19 vaccine administration. “We’re going to be restricted by federal allocations [of vaccine doses], but we want to make sure that there’s nothing sitting on any shelf anywhere.”