State Helping Businesses with Vaccine Clinics
ISDH Chief Medical Officer Dr. Lindsay Weaver
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As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowThe state says it is working with certain Hoosier businesses on implementing their own COVID-19 vaccination clinics. Dr. Lindsay Weaver, chief medical officer for the Indiana State Department of Health, says the effort is initially focused on businesses with more than 1,000 employees.
During Governor Eric Holcomb’s weekly COVID-19 press briefing, Weaver said about a dozen businesses are currently in the process of launching vaccine clinics.
“The majority of these companies have in-house or third-party health partners who administer the vaccinations to their employees and the sites will receive primarily the Pfizer vaccine,” said Weaver. “This week, we were able to allocate 24,000 doses to distribute to those businesses. Multiple other organizations are in the process of finalizing their plans and we expect to allocate another 6,000 for those entities this week.”
Weaver says the state has been working on a plan to help businesses for several months.
“(We) engaged businesses, first a small group of 10 businesses, just to get their feedback on what this would look like and then provided a playbook of sorts for our businesses and industries and we sent that out to…I think it’s almost 300 (businesses) in Indiana that have 1,000 or more employees to allow them to start the process of figuring out what would this look like to them,” she said.
One business that has already begun vaccinating employees is Subaru of Indiana Automotive Inc., which employs nearly 7,000 people in Lafayette. The automaker began its vaccination efforts last week and a spokesperson tells Inside INdiana Business the company is planning to host two all-day clinics per week with the ability to vaccinate up to 1,000 employees weekly.
Weaver says based on previous experience among businesses with flu clinics, bringing the vaccine directly to businesses will increase the number of vaccinated Hoosiers. She adds the state expects more businesses to join the process as time goes on.
You can watch the full press briefing below:
Weaver says about a dozen businesses are currently in the process of launching vaccine clinics.