Royal Oak Tribune

Partnershi­p boosts vaccinatio­n efforts

- By Paula Pasche ppasche@medianewsg­roup.com

Help is on the way to continue getting COVID-19 vaccines to Oakland County seniors ages 65 and over.

More than 101,000 senior citizens in the county (about 46%) and all 23,000 school personnel on the Health Division’s Save Your Spot list have received their first vaccine dose or an invitation to a vaccinatio­n appointmen­t.

On Thursday, Oakland County Health Division announced it is partnering with Ready Nursing Solutions to assist the county with administer­ing COVID-19 vaccine to long-term care staff and residents, as well as homebound seniors.

“We still have much to do, but we are making progress offering COVID vaccine to our senior citizens, teachers, and other eligible individual­s,” Oakland County Executive Dave Coulter said. “Our partnershi­p with Ready Nursing Solutions as a third vaccine becomes available will help us to continue our steady march toward the goal of protecting our residents and putting this pandemic behind us.”

Oakland County so far has administer­ed vaccines at 36 of the 70 long-term care facilities that were not covered by the federal contract with Walgreens and CVS. With the new agreement, Ready Nursing Solutions will provide nurses who will assist the health division with administer­ing vaccine at the remaining long-term care facilities and will begin giving doses to homebound seniors in the county.

“To vaccinate more than 1 million eligible individual­s in Oakland County requires sharing the workload with our public and private partners,” Oakland County Health and Human Services Director LeighAnne Stafford said. “We are so pleased to be working with Ready Nursing Solutions to help us get vaccines in arms of at-risk seniors that much sooner.”

To sign up an Oakland County homebound senior citizen to receive a COVID vaccine, call 810-331-0902 to make an appointmen­t directly with Ready Nursing Solutions.

To register online, go to GetReadyVa­cine.com and complete the Patient Intake Form.

Be sure to select “Oakland County Residents – Homebound” on the intake form organizati­on dropdown menu.

The homebound senior must meet State of Michigan eligibilit­y requiremen­ts.

“The communitie­s we serve are often underserve­d or overlooked. Our goal with Ready Nursing Solutions is to ensure that our most vulnerable groups have access to the COVID-19 vaccine at no cost,” Ready Nursing Solutions CEO Mark Smith said.

As of March 2, Michigan’s COVID-19 Vaccine Dashboard reports more than 315,000 COVID-19 vaccine doses have been administer­ed countywide, which includes more than 196,000 first doses, or a coverage of 19.1 percent.

The eligible population in Oakland County is nearly 1.03 million. Of that group, more than 217,000 are Oakland County residents 65 and older.

The percentage of COVID vaccine administer­ed in Oakland County by all providers to date is over 96%.

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