City announces student clinics, shares where to get 3rd shot<\/a>]<\/ins><\/p>\nHospital administration regularly held staff town halls, Lawhorne said, are trying to actively make sure staff’s needs were being met and have made additional mental health services available to staff. However, Lawhorne said at the beginning of the pandemic there was a greater supply of national resources, including health care workers, that has since been depleted.<\/p>\n
Lawhorne said she and members of the Alaska State Hospital and Nursing Home Association recently met with Gov. Mike Dunleavy about additional measures to alleviate staffing shortages. The state has good stockpiles of supplies such as personal protective equipment Bartlett can and has accessed, Lawhorne said, but shortages of testing supplies nationally are concerning.<\/p>\n
Breakthroughs and boosters<\/p>\n
Vaccinated people are still contracting the virus, known as breakthrough cases, but recent studies from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that while the efficacy of the vaccine at preventing contracting the disease decreases over time, the efficacy at preventing severe infection or hospitalization remains high. Federal health officials announced last week immunocompromised people should get another dose of the Moderna, Pfizer and Jansen vaccines while fully vaccinated people should receive a booster dose.<\/p>\n
According to the CDC, a booster dose is another dose given to someone who built enough protection after the initial vaccination but the protection decreased over time. An additional dose is specifically for immunocompromised people who may not have been able to build up enough or any protection when they were first vaccinated, the CDC says. The CDC is recommending moderately to severely immunocompromised people consider receiving a third dose of an mRNA COVID-19 vaccine — such as the Pfizeror or Moderna vaccines— at least 28 days after the completion of the initial two-dose mRNA COVID-19 vaccine series.<\/p>\n
Health officials recommend the general public who received a two-dose vaccine get a booster shot eight months after they completed their vaccine series.<\/p>\n
The city is still developing its plans for administering booster shots to the general public, Barr said, but officials anticipate the process will be similar to the initial rollout with mass-vaccination clinics held at Centennial Hall. Officials are still awaiting additional guidance from federal authorities but initial recommendations have given Sept. 20, as the date distributions should begin, Barr said.<\/p>\n
At an Aug. 19, news conference DHSS epidemiologist Matt Bobo made similar statements and said the state’s rollout of additional doses and boosters would likely be similar to the initial rollout.<\/p>\n
According to Lawhorne, Bartlett had already begun offering an additional dose to its immunocompromised staff.<\/p>\n
Barr said city officials were confident the current mitigation measures in place were effective when followed. The city regularly gives large gathering exemptions for weddings and religious congregations on the grounds they implement mitigation strategies.<\/p>\n
“When those events employ masking well, it’s very rare for us to see spread,” Barr said, “especially among a population that are vaccinated.”<\/p>\n
Barr said the city’s current mitigation measures, which include a mask mandate in publicly used buildings and areas, were the least intrusive ways for the city to try and contain the spread of COVID-19.<\/p>\n
On Monday city officials announced separate vaccine clinics for students ages 12 and older and the immunocompromised in the coming weeks.<\/p>\n
Lawhorne said Bartlett is trying to operate as normally as possible, but announced last week it was evaluating certain surgeries requiring an inpatient stay to see which could be delayed to keep the number of occupied beds to a minimum.<\/p>\n
“We’re very aware of the impact that this could have and we’re trying to keep operating as normal as possible,” Lawhorne said. “We want the community we know we’re here to take care of the community whatever your needs are.”<\/p>\n
• Contact reporter Peter Segall at psegall@juneauempire.com. Follow him on Twitter at @SegallJnuEmpire.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"National supplies strained. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":531,"featured_media":74539,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":9,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,4],"tags":[703,75],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-74538","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-home","category-news","tag-coronavirus","tag-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74538","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/531"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=74538"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74538\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/74539"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=74538"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=74538"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=74538"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=74538"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}