Pritzker attempts to explain frustrating vaccine rollout at Belleville mass vax site
National Guard troops greet visitors with a thermometer these days at the Belle-Clair Fairgrounds building, recently transformed into St. Clair County’s mass vaccination site.
Temporary gray walls of cheap wood separate cubicles for vaccinations, each equipped with a small round table topped with a green plastic tablecloth and a few spartan chairs on the concrete floor. For now, the interior is only for people who arrive at the site via public transit.
At full capacity, staffers will be able to administer doses to up to 2,000 people a day. Though most of the action happens outside in the site’s drive-thru clinic — it can accommodate up to 18 vehicles at once — it has yet to reach its full potential.
As of Thursday, public and private providers in the county averaged just over 1,300 doses administered a day. Since Feb. 1, the Belle-Clair site had administered roughly 10,000 doses, on average of just over 550 per day.
Gov. J.B. Pritzker toured the site Wednesday and promised his administration fights to get as many vaccines as possible from the federal government for Illinois, and attempted to explain why the process is still so frustratingly slow.
“Overall our progress to date is something everyone should be proud of. That doesn’t mean getting an appointment for a vaccine hasn’t been a frustrating experience. It doesn’t mean that it isn’t frustrating for me as governor to not have enough supply coming into the state,” Pritzker said. “We’ve all had to be patient and wait our turn.”
The governor repeated the same arguments he has made in recent weeks when visiting other vaccination sites: the Trump administration failed to produce a cohesive plan; Illinois decided on a slower rollout to get to as many people in early vaccine eligibility phases as possible; distribution of the vaccine is based on a county’s population and need.
He promised things will improve under President Joe Biden’s leadership, and said Illinois will receive 500,000 doses next week. Pritzker pointed to the possible approval of the Johnson & Johnson one-dose vaccine later this month.
But the day when anyone can get a vaccine is still “a long way off,” he said, and like other health officials, Pritzker doesn’t know when manufacturing of the vaccine will increase enough to allow for a return to normal.
The governor’s office and the Illinois Department of Public Health is on the phone every day with the federal government to make sure the state gets its fair share as quickly as possible, Pritzker said.
Likewise, St. Clair County is on the phone with the state to advocate for their share of the vaccine, said St. Clair County Emergency Management Agency Director Herb Simmons.
“It’s an everyday battle,” Simmons said.
And it’s a battle that changes daily. The vaccine supply for each county changes from week to week, making it difficult to plan appointments more than three days out. That’s as far ahead as the St. Clair County Health Department can schedule appointments, said Deputy Director Myla Blandford.
National Guard troops, local staffers and the 2,000-person daily capacity of the fairgrounds stand ready to ramp up vaccinations dramatically. But with only 2.37% of the county population fully vaccinated, a simple lack of vaccines remains the issue, and state and local officials have no real idea of when they will come with regularity.
“The light at the end of the tunnel is getting brighter,” Simmons said. “We just got to get those needles into people’s arms.”
This story was originally published February 18, 2021 at 3:22 PM.
