ORANGE — A second day of COVID-19 vaccinations is slated for Saturday in the Ralph C. Mahar Regional School parking lot, and Orange Health Agent Matthew Fortier said another 250 people ages 75 and older are expected to get the vaccine.
The Orange Board of Health is hosting the clinics, having held the first one Wednesday. These clinics, from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m., are for residents of only Orange, New Salem and Wendell. Appointments must be scheduled ahead of time, and sign-ups will be monitored to ensure adherence to age and demographic requirements.
Volunteers from the three towns work the clinics and have been making calls to inform people of the opportunity. Fortier said the 500 doses received for the two clinics will vaccinate about 60 percent of the towns’ residents who are 75 and older. Some people, he said, decline vaccines on religious grounds or for other reasons.
Fortier, who started as health agent in March, said he organized a flu clinic late last year to ensure the infrastructure was in place to administer COVID-19 vaccines.
“(It) was essentially a practice run for a big COVID clinic,” he said, adding that Jamie Terry, the Region 2 Central Massachusetts public health emergency planner, “gave us the double thumbs-up” to hold a similar clinic once the COVID-19 vaccines became available.
Fortier, who said he and his wife have made some of the informational calls, explained Orange is a member of a 14-town consortium that received vaccines from the state and disseminated them to the towns. He said the state has not set up a call center for people interested in getting a vaccine, and phone calls are necessary because many people ages 75 and older don’t own computers or are not particularly computer-savvy and rely on the phone.
Jane Peirce, vice chair of the Orange Selectboard and a member of the town’s Board of Health, said she has made some calls herself, informing elderly relatives and their friends that the doses are in. She said she and her husband, Keith LaRiviere, who sits on the Orange Finance Committee, are two of the volunteers working the clinics.
“This is an incredible effort. We learned last Thursday that we could get 500 doses and our health agent, Matt Fortier, jumped on it and said, ‘We have to get a clinic together,’” Peirce said, adding that Fortier immediately began recruiting volunteers. “I’m so proud of this community and pleased that we can do this. Hopefully, we’ll get another batch of vaccines.”
More information is available on the state Department of Public Health’s website at bit.ly/3oQbeGZ and the Orange Board of Health’s Facebook page at bit.ly/3jdinzW.
Reach Domenic Poli at: dpoli@recorder.com or 413-772-0261, ext. 262.