For starters, the COVID-19 vaccine doses intended for Ness County in west-central Kansas landed somewhere else.
“That was my first clue we had a problem,” said Carolyn Gabel, the county’s public health administrator.
Then someone from Dodge City called. Those vials bound for Ness City? They hadn’t been kept as cold as needed. They were no good anymore and needed replacing.
Eventually, she had to drive to the next county to the west, pick up a different set of doses, put them in her cooler and dash back across 30-plus miles to her office.
“Instead of having the vaccine before Christmas like we should have had,” Gabel said, “we didn’t get it until after Christmas.”
In some parts of the state, things have gone a little smoother.
But the rollout of a potentially pandemic-ending vaccine in Kansas — a state still seeing some of the highest infection rates in the country — looks at best uneven. And that’s put the state in last place, at least in terms of reporting, for the rate that it’s vaccinated its residents against the killer virus.
Larger population centers in Kansas don’t have the lost-package problems of Ness County, but many have had trouble getting the vaccine in their freezers transformed into shots in the arms of health care workers.
Public health officials across Kansas say they’ve found themselves regularly unsure — often lacking clear instructions from Topeka or Washington — on how best to get the most people vaccinated in the quickest way.
Gabel got four vials of the Moderna vaccine. It was enough for about 40 doses. But other than receiving the vaccine with some needles and syringes, she wasn’t really told anything.
She had to figure out what paperwork to use, what patients were required to know and how to file reports with the state and federal government by herself.
“There was just a lot more prep work to this than what we had any idea about,” she said.
Other smaller counties had issues, too. The Coffey and Osage county health departments disputed the state’s claim on Monday that all 105 counties had received vaccines. Neither had.
By Tuesday afternoon, shortly after raising the issue, the Coffey County Health Department reported it had received 80 doses earmarked specifically for health care workers.
In larger counties, the rollout has gone a bit smoother, but imperfectly.
