Onslow County officials continue to adjust personnel to efficiently administer their stock of COVID-19 vaccinations and in doing so, they have decided to shut down their phone lines for the remainder of the week.
The Onslow County Citizens Phone Bank will be closed Thursday, Jan. 21 and Friday, Jan 22. as residents will not be able to schedule new vaccination appointments. Officials made the announcement Wednesday afternoon in order to free up staffing so they can complete previous callers vaccine schedules and help with the county s transition into a more streamlined scheduling system.
A news release from the county is quoted as saying, staff manning the citizen s phone bank are normally assigned other jobs. Additionally, other staff have been assigned tasks associated with the administration of the vaccine. The closure will allow the existing staff to dedicate time to the newly available appointments and to learn the new software.
They came out early and often on.
Once news broke about Governor Roy Cooper s addition of residents age 75 and older to Phase 1B of the state s COVID-19 Vaccine Distribution Prioritization Framework, Onslow County officials explained the phone began ringing off the hook with questions.
Those questions and more were answered on Monday when the county s Citizens Phone Bank started the first registrations for the new group, which transferred into the first vaccinations given to the elderly early Wednesday morning. What made this process swift was the partnership between Onslow Memorial Hospital and the Onslow County Health Department.
OMH has gifted 120 vials (approximately 600-700 doses) of the Pfizer vaccine to the OCHD in order to support the community s demand once the state approved the county s move into Phase 1B, according to a