First McHenry County residents in Phase 1b to be vaccinated through Jewel-Osco

Two Jewel-Osco locations in Huntley will administer the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine to a limited number of McHenry County residents 65 years and older, the McHenry County Department of Health said in a news release.

The health department was notified over the weekend that Jewel Osco was set to receive a limited supply of vaccine doses that would be allocated to McHenry County, according to the release sent out Monday evening.

The health department didn’t say when the vaccines would be administered but said those that qualify should watch their email for a link to schedule an appointment. To qualify for the vaccines, residents need to be 65 years or older and have completed the McHenry County Department of Health’s vaccine enrollment form.

“We welcome any opportunity to increase the vaccine supply in McHenry County and expect to announce additional community partnerships in the coming weeks that will expand options for vaccine administration as we transition into Phase 1b,” the county’s public health administrator, Melissa Adamson, said in the release.

The doses were allocated to Jewel-Osco directly from the federal government’s vaccine supply and are separate from the McHenry County health department’s weekly allotment from the state, according to the news release.

Once the health department has received enough doses to move on to Phase 1b countywide, Northwestern Medicine will aid the department by hosting their own vaccine clinics to immunize eligible patients, Northwestern Medicine spokeswoman Michelle Green said Monday.

Gov. JB Pritzker announced Friday that Phase 1b of the vaccination process, which includes residents 65 years and older and frontline essential workers, would begin on Monday. But individual Illinois counties are moving through the process at different paces.

Even in Phase 1a, Northwestern Medicine hospitals in McHenry County began vaccinating their staff “about two weeks after downtown hospitals and places where there were higher levels of mortality from COVID-19,” Green said. “So we’re just a little bit behind, which actually shows that we’ve done a good job of managing COVID in our community.”

More opportunities for Phase 1b populations to receive the vaccine will follow “in the coming weeks,” according to Monday’s release from the health department.

When the county is able to make this transition, Northwestern Medicine will aid the effort by inviting eligible existing patients to schedule appointments to be vaccinated through regular clinics that will be held at a Northwestern Medicine hospital in McHenry County, she said.

Someone is considered to be an existing patient if “they have a Northwestern Medicine primary care physician or regularly see a Northwestern Medicine specialist,” Green said. Eligible patients will be contacted once the vaccine is available by email, text or phone call, based on the preferences they listed in the hospital’s system.

Over in Lake County, Advocate Good Shepherd Hospital is following a very similar process.

“As we join others in Illinois and Wisconsin by moving into the next phase of our COVID-19 vaccination program, we are distributing vaccines by appointment only and prioritized by age and risk factors,” a spokesperson for the hospital group said in an emailed statement Monday evening. “At this time, members of the community cannot simply go to a hospital or other care site to get vaccinated.”

Eligible Advocate Aurora Health patients will be notified when they can sign up via email and then through a follow-up text or phone call, according to the statement. Patients are encouraged to download the LiveWell mobile app to schedule their vaccination appointment.

Northwestern Medicine will decide which of its patients are eligible to receive invitations to be vaccinated based on guidelines for Phases 1a and 1b, but primarily based on their age and ZIP code, Green said.

Identifying patients who are front-line essential workers is less straight forward than identifying those who fall into the older than 65 population within Phase 1b.

Green encouraged anyone eligible in Phase 1b and beyond to “be very aware within their communities of all of the opportunities to register.”

This includes getting information from the McHenry County Department of Health’s COVID-19 vaccine page, their primary care provider and their employer in the case of essential workers, she said.

“I would recommend that everybody be aware of every potential vaccination site and go where you can get your vaccine first,” she said.