McHenry County to receive Johnson & Johnson vaccine shipment this week

McHenry County will receive its first shipment of the COVID-19 vaccine developed by Johnson & Johnson this week and plans to reserve the doses of the one-shot vaccine for vulnerable, hard-to-reach populations, a McHenry County Department of Health official said Monday.

The county was notified late last week that a “limited” number of Johnson & Johnson vaccine doses would be included in its weekly allocation of doses from the state, Public Health Nursing Director Susan Karras said.

“It will not be available to the general population that’s in Phase 1b, that can get to our public clinics,” Karras said.

This allotment will be reserved for people in McHenry County more logistically challenging to vaccinate or are particularly vulnerable to infection or illness, including homebound seniors, the homeless, and employees of large manufacturing companies, she said.

Multiple outbreaks have been identified in factories, causing them to be labeled as “hot spots” for COVID-19 infection, which is why it was important to vaccinate these workers quickly using a one-shot vaccine like Johnson & Johnson, she said.

Factories “struggle to keep that 6-foot distancing because of the layout of their business and what their functions are,” Karras said in a McHenry County Board of Health meeting earlier this month.

“Most of these businesses, too, do have a large Hispanic population working, and we do know, disproportionately, that they are being affected more than other ethnic groups in our community,” Karras said in a previous interview with the Northwest Herald, which focused on the use of National Guard troops deployed to the county.

Vaccinating homebound seniors presents an immense logistical challenge as they live spread out across the county, so the health department will need to be strategic in how they schedule home visits to avoid wasting doses, McHenry County Board Chair Mike Buehler said in an interview earlier this month.

The Johnson & Johnson vaccine requires just one shot in the arm and fully protection is achieved two weeks after the shot is administered, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The J&J vaccine was found to be 66.3% effective in protecting against all illness in clinical trials.

In a COVID-19 press briefing given from the White House Monday, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, said, with the exception of one hospitalized patient in a clinical trial for the Moderna vaccine, all five of the vaccine candidates currently in play offer “virtually 100% protection against hospitalizations and death” associated with COVID-19 infection.

In clinical trials of the J&J vaccine, not one person who got COVID-19 at least 4 weeks after receiving the vaccine had to be hospitalized, according to the CDC.