Hours after the Christian County Health Department began administering COVID-19 bivalent booster doses Thursday morning, a spokeswoman said the department was quickly running through the limited allotment it received from the state.
Cloie Rager said in a press release that the department expected to use all of its Moderna bivalent vaccine doses on Thursday. It would then shift to a the Pfizer bivalent, for which there is also a limited supply.
Rager told Hoptown Chronicle that the health department received approximately 100 doses of Moderna and a few hundred of Pfizer.
“We requested more than this, however, they never guarantee that we [will] receive the amount we request,” she said in an email.
The earliest opportunity to order more doses of Moderna bivalent for Christian County will be the week of Sept. 19, and local officials cannot say how many doses will be delivered or when they will arrive, she said.
The bivalent vaccines are formulated to specifically target dominant Omicron subvariants, BA.4 and BA.5.
The Moderna booster is authorized for all individuals 18 and older, while the Pfizer shot may be administered to anyone 12 and older. The health department will offer both shots, according to its release.
Appointments are not required. The health department will administer the vaccines from 7:45 a.m. to 4 p.m. every Thursday.
Jennifer P. Brown is co-founder, publisher and editor of Hoptown Chronicle. You can reach her at editor@hoptownchronicle.org. She spent 30 years as a reporter and editor at the Kentucky New Era. She is a co-chair of the national advisory board to the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues, governing board president for the Kentucky Historical Society, and co-founder of the Kentucky Open Government Coalition.
