Cerro Gordo County Department of Public Health director says they’re preparing for booster dose distribution

MASON CITY — The Cerro Gordo County Department of Public Health director says his department continues to prepare for the distribution of COVID-19 booster doses. 

Brian Hanft says his department realizes how many booster doses they will likely need to administer right away when the federal government rolls out its booster dose program next month.  “We’ve gone in and done an audit for the number of vaccines we’ve administered throughout the process of the last nine months. We know exactly when people hit eight months. We’ve got that list. It’s anywhere from 100 people at a time to 2200 people.”

Hanft says they’re working with their community partners in an effort to try to spread that work around.  “The department, looking at what our ‘plan B’ will be, and where we might set up to be able to handle a larger volume than the 100 we are seeing, and we think we can probably handle about 500 doses if we set up in one of those locations that we’re trying to figure out, working with Mercy and also trying to figure out what that plan is.”

Hanft made his comments during today’s meeting of the Cerro Gordo County Board of Supervisors.

Booster shots are being offered to all Americans beginning the week of September 20th and starting eight months after an individual’s second dose.