Wright-Patt awaits its vaccinedoses
Arrival date unknown, but base personnel has practiced distribution.
The Department of Defense has distributed about 44,000 initial doses of the COVID-19 vaccine to 13 military bases. But officials at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base have not heard when the local base is due to receive any doses, a spokeswoman for the 88th Air Base Wing said Wednesday.
“As of now, we do not know when they will arrive,” said Stacey Geiger, a spokeswoman for the 88th Air Base Wing, which acts as landlord for Wright-Patterson.
When the vaccine becomes available, Wright-Patterson will publicize that availability, shesaid.
Col. Patrick Miller, installation commander atWright-Patterson and commander of the 88th Air Base Wing, said last week that
Wright-Patterson was not then slated to receive vaccines.
“Wright-Patterson is not part of the initial distribution of vaccines,” he said then. “The Departmentof Defense is layingout those priorities, running through that, but that does not meanwe’re sitting idle.”
He said base personnel recently went through a “table top” exercise, a dry run to plan how to receive, store and distribute vaccines.
“And I tell you, the team is ready,” Miller said. “And whenever we do receive vaccines, we have a plan in place for distribution.”
He also said the base will follow a “prescriptive” approach in distributing vaccines, with a focus on health-care workers.
“Wheneverwe do receive vaccines, it’s something very similar to what Ohio is doing and many other states are doing,” the colonel said. “And that’s following a prescriptive criteria, working our way down some priorities, and the No. 1 focus is going to be on our health-care workers, our first responders and any other public safety personnel that we have. That’s where our focus is going to be.”
Miller also said in a recent Facebook video that the base remains in “health-care protection condition bravo.” Such status would ordinarily let up to half of the base’s working population of more than 30,000 people return