Regional health providers report that COVID-19 vaccines are making their way to villages in the Norton Sound region, with health clinic workers in Stebbins and Brevig Mission being among the first to get the shot.
Norton Sound Health Corporation (NSHC) said it has teams flying out to do initial vaccination rounds in each of the 15 communities in its service area. Health consortium spokesperson Reba Lean said village clinic workers, first responders, critical infrastructure workers, and Elders were among the first people vaccinated. In most communities, Lean said that’s about 10% of a village’s population.
Winter storms were battering down most of the Seward Peninsula and Eastern Norton Sound on Tuesday. But weather permitting, NSHC said it plans to do initial vaccinations in each village over the next week and a half.
A final proposal introduced by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) earlier this month would make more than 13 million acres of public lands in the Western Bering Sea region open to development. As KNOM reports, dozens of Alaska Native Tribes say their concerns haven’t been adequately addressed in the proposal.
The new and final plan would replace previous land management plans that have been in place since the 1980’s. As BLM Alaska State Director Chad Padgett explained, the proposal has been in the works since 2013.
“BLM under the federal land management policy act is compelled to update land planning, every so often as land patterns change, and as management prescriptions change, things like that.”