Sportsmen’s Show will shift Deschutes County vaccine clinic to ‘pop-up’ locations

County official assures no vaccine doses will 'sit or go to waste'

REDMOND, Ore. (KTVZ) – Next week’s Central Oregon Sportsmen’s Show at the Deschutes County Fairgrounds in Redmond will replace the county’s mass vaccination clinic site for a week, but plans are in place to provide “pop-up” clinics around the county, so every dose shipped and in hand will be used, an official said Monday.

The clinic operated for recent weeks will be taken down so the March 11-14 event can provide proper social distancing, according to Molly Wells Darling, who has served as an incident commander for the clinic, held by the Deschutes County Health Services in partnership with St. Charles Health System.

“For that week, with whatever vaccines we are allotted by the Oregon Health Authority, we will be providing pop-up clinics in Deschutes County, focusing mostly on vulnerable populations or folks having a harder time getting to the mass vaccination site,” Wells Darling said.

The clinics have operated up to five days a week, depending on the allotted doses, Wells Darling said, having received 10,000 doses in some past weeks. But she also noted that the county hasn’t received over 3,000 weekly doses in recent weeks. That has meant providing just a one-day first-dose clinic each week and on other days providing the second doses. This week, the first-dose clinic is planned for Friday.

Regarding details of the “pop-up” clinic week, Wells Darling said, “When we get our (count of) allotted doses, that will drive where those clinics will be.”

As for making appointments, Darling said they might use the phone system, much as at present, or work from the information residents have submitted using the county’s COVID-19 Vaccination Interest Form, at https://vaccine.deschutes.org/,

“We will be continuing as usual, in terms of getting vaccines into arms,” based on the state and CDC categories of who’s currently eligible, Wells Darling said. “It’ll just be in a different location, probably a handful of locations. We will not let vaccines sit, and we will not let any vaccine doses go to waste. We’ve had some time to plan for it, and we feel very confident we’ll be able to do that.”

The second-dose clinics are expected to resume at the Expo Center on Tuesday, March 16, Darling said.

Darling said she doesn't believe another event, the High Desert Stampede rodeo on March 26-27, will be affecting their operations in similar fashion.