Minnesota gets creative in COVID-19 vaccine outreach Dwindling demand forces new approaches to boost immunization numbers. May 8, 2021 6:19pm Text size Copy shortlink:
In Duluth, they re offering vaccine shots in the downtown bus depot.
In St. Paul, volunteer physicians are working with a local brewery on a pop-up event that rewards those who get vaccinated with a free beer.
And in the northwest metro, an Elk River clinic is offering shots to patients as they seek help for other health care needs.
The strategies are meant to persuade Minnesota s unvaccinated to finally get their shots at a time when the pace of COVID-19 immunizations has slowed significantly. Since early April, the statewide average for first doses administered has fallen from about 40,000 per day to fewer than 14,000 at the end of last week, according to the Star Tribune s vaccination tracker.
View Comments
Humboldt welcomed its 83rd annual West Tennessee Strawberry Festival this week with a massive outpouring of local residents ready to celebrate the city’s biggest week of the year.
Kicked off with Monday’s Prayer Breakfast, the long-anticipated extravaganza hosted firework shows, parade floats, pageants and cook-offs.
“It was kind of sad that it was cancelled!” said festival attendee and Humboldt resident Carol Moore, as she watched Friday’s parade from her lawn chair. “We were so used to coming. But it is what it is, for safety reasons.”
The festival has only been cancelled twice since its inception in the 1930s once, during World War II, and most recently due to the pandemic.
Mayo Clinic Health System, Mankato Area Public Schools partner to host 2 vaccination clinics for students
Share on Facebook
Share on LinkedIn
MANKATO, Minn. (KEYC) In an effort to make COVID-19 vaccines more accessible for high school students, Mankato Area Public Schools partnered with Mayo Clinic Health System to host two vaccination clinics Thursday.
Students got the opportunity to get vaccinated at both Mankato East and Mankato West High School.
“We really wanted to make an effort to come to them, recognizing that they have obligations during the day and after school that might make it hard for them to go to other COVID vaccination clinics,” said Lindsay Hennel, nurse administrator at Mayo Clinic Health System.
Why COVID-19 vaccine demand is slowing: Q&A with Dr. Greg Poland There are risks and benefits either way you go, says vaccinologist. Making a decision to not get a vaccine is infinitely riskier. 10:30 am, May 1, 2021 ×
Dr. Greg Poland, a Mayo Clinic physician and vaccinologist as well as director of the clinic s Vaccine Research Group and editor-in-chief of the medical journal Vaccine. (Mayo Clinic photo)
ROCHESTER, Minn. Since the introduction of the first vaccine, there has been opposition to vaccination, Mayo Clinic vaccinologist Dr. Gregory Poland wrote in a 2011 paper in the New England Journal of Medicine.
Poland, director of the Mayo Clinic vaccine research group, says opposition greeted the first smallpox vaccine in the 19th century, subsided as the public witnessed the 20th century taming of measles mumps, polio pertussis and rubella, and then re-emerged as the memory of those diseases fell away.