Public Health plans weekly mass drive-through clinics

Geauga Public Health announced it will be directing the weekly mass drive-through clinics for first doses of the coronavirus vaccine every Tuesday, beginning April 13.

The clinic will require appointments. The scheduling website is found at https:// vaccine.GPHOhio.org.

“The timing of the launch of the scheduling tool, the opening up of eligibility to all adults later this month, and the start of our weekly mass drive-through clinics could not have aligned any better,” Health Commissioner Thomas Quade said in a news release.

This collaborative effort is in partnership with University Hospital Geauga County Medical Center, the Geauga County Sheriff’s Office, and the Geauga County Fair Board.

Geauga Public Health and UH Geauga Medical Center will combine resources to staff and supply the clinics with necessary vaccine doses and other supplies, the release stated. The Geauga County Sheriff is assisting in coordinating additional staff support to assist with the clinic as well as EMS providers are able to provide vaccinations.

Back in January, the county government phone system crashed under the weight of incoming calls to schedule vaccination appointments.

As an interim strategy to schedule appointments, Geauga Public Health launched a survey tool to collect contact information from residents who wanted an appointment and then health department staff called out to them rather than taking incoming calls, according to a news release.

That tool quickly collected more than 22,000 lines of data. That process was complicated as it was launched before the state had come up with a plan on eligibility rollout, the health department noted.

Within days after that January phone system crashed, Quade was working with the Geauga County IT team through the Auditor’s

Office and quickly partnered with a local company, Company119, to develop an actual appointment scheduling tool, the release stated.

“I am always so impressed with the degree of intergovernmental cooperation and the ability to take advantage of public private collaboration in Geauga County,” he said in the release. “This is how to solve problems quickly.”