The Way We Work Now
What I’ve Learned Giving Vaccines in Rural America
We don’t have many doses yet. Giving them out fairly is a challenge.
The Way We Work Now is a series chronicling how people’s lives and careers have fundamentally changed because of the pandemic.
Leia, a thirtysomething pharmacy student in Texas, volunteers in administering the Covid-19 vaccine. She spoke with Mai Tran about the uneven distribution of vaccines across various regions.
I’m a doctoral student doing rural pharmacy rotations, and unfortunately, the majority of vaccines are going to large cities. Sometimes it’s hard to get our community to drive two or three hours to the nearest city that has vaccines. Regulations vary state by state so some places are better about distribution than others.
I was on a six-week rotation with Indian Health Service at Choctaw Nation in Oklahoma when we received a shipment of the Pfizer ultracold vaccine. It came to a hospital that had the storage capacity for it in a deep freezer. I watched a video on how to administer and store it, and started the campaign with hospital staff. I was furnished with surgical and N95 masks, face shields, and gloves. The vaccine was hard to transport storage-wise, so we had people come to us. Everything was…
