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Q&A: How is UnityPoint Health handling the new coronavirus vaccine?

Local 5 spoke with Dr. David Williams, who has been on the front lines of the pandemic.

DES MOINES, Iowa — Any possible fluctuations in Iowa's allotment of the COVID-19 vaccine is big news and will have big impacts. 

Local 5 is making sense of it all and getting reactions from those on the front lines. 

Stephanie Angleson spoke with Dr. David Williams, who oversees UnityPoint Health partners. 

Local 5: Can you first walk us through the chain of communication between your hospitals and the state in terms of the COVID vaccine coming to you?

Williams: Yeah, so it is a complex process. As you can imagine, obviously, the federal government controls the allocation of the vaccine, then it comes to our state and local public health departments. 

Our state has done a great job keeping in contact with all of the health systems UnityPoint Health and others. We expect some bumps in the road. 

And we expect with this complex process, there's going to be times where we receive a little bit less than we were expecting. We continue to work the plan and we continue to get those vaccines to our team members as soon as we can.

Local 5: We know you're having to change directions as soon as you get those orders in or whatever is coming down the pipeline for you. 

But how do you decide which hospitals in the state, which clinics and which facilities get those vaccines first?

Williams: I'm really proud we put a team together of our physician and nursing leaders and they developed our own internal tiering system. And it's one that makes great sense to me. 

They're going to make great sense to everybody who we've prioritized, is the patients that have the most direct contact taking care of people with COVID

So we want to get the vaccine to everybody. We will get the vaccine to everybody who wants it. But we're going to start with the people that are directly taking care of those patients day to day.

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Local 5: If there is a reduction in the number of doses that do come to Iowa eventually, in this first round here, will that change your plan to vaccinate health care workers?

Williams: It's not going to change our plans. We're going to continue to work our list and we're going to continue to get these vaccines to our people just as quickly as we can. We don't control how much vaccine gets distributed to us.

But we're just going to do our best to kind of follow the bumps in the process and do our best to keep safe and effective vaccination programs in place.

Local 5: And this week as it's rolled out, we've been very appreciative of you sharing how you've been vaccinating health care workers in your facilities. 

So how do you think it's going so far this early into the process?

Williams: I think it's going tremendously so far. I'm really proud of my team. We have tremendous uptake in the vaccine. Our employees are really wanting to get this vaccine. 

We have had well over 400 team members in Des Moines get this vaccine, we have had zero visible reactions at this point. 

I couldn't be more thrilled with that number. It's going very well.

Local 5: How are you keeping track of those who have been vaccinated? And again, we've talked about side effects so are you monitoring for that? 

And how do you do that?

Williams: Yeah, we're definitely monitoring for that.  We're using technology to sign people up so we can monitor them. 

We're also using a texting platform so that we can remind people to come back for their second dose because it's very important that we not only get our team members vaccinated with that first dose, but we want everybody to get that second dose within 21 days.

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