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11/10/2020 12:50 PMThe Board of Selectmen (BOS) approved federally funded grant money amounting to a little more than $27,000 to fund contact tracing and vaccine distribution efforts in Madison, as the town both grapples with an increase in cases locally as well as making very preliminary preparations to begin administering a future vaccine to essential workers.
About $9,000 of the $27,000 is being set aside for the future vaccination efforts, according to Health Director Trent Joseph, while the rest will fund the temporary hiring of a nurse to assist the town in local contact tracing efforts.
This money came from a $20 million fund set aside by Governor Ned Lamont in late October to broadly assist local health departments with COVID mitigation, according to Joseph.
The nurse position is slated to work for 24 weeks for about 20 hours a week, according to the grant application approved by the BOS. Joseph said that position is a highlight of the grant and will be extremely helpful for his office.
Madison will potentially serve as a regional distribution center for a future vaccine, Joseph told the BOS, as regional discussions around where, when, and how it will be administered to front-line workers have been ongoing over the last two months or so.
Though Madison is on a list of regional distribution centers for a region that stretches roughly from Milford to Essex, Joseph cautioned that this didn’t mean anything as far as priority for a vaccine. The preliminary discussions of distribution centers are just part of “planning and preparing,” he said.
In a phone conversation with The Source, Joseph emphasized that the vaccine distribution plan is in its preliminary stages and nearly everything is subject to change, as the focus remains on getting a vaccine to essential workers and not to the population at large.
He cautioned strongly against any members of the general public expecting a widely distributed vaccine anytime soon, and urged residents to continue to focus on maintaining social distancing practices and avoiding gatherings as local cases of the virus continue to rise.
In anticipation of an eventual vaccine, town health directors have been asked to over the last couple months make lists of their “critical work force,” according to Joseph, which includes police, firefighters, and EMS staff, as well as town employees working at Town Campus, along with Board of Education employees including teachers.
In the grant paperwork approved by the BOS, the $9,000 is estimated to cover approximately 180 employees—fire, police, and EMS, according to Joseph- at a cost of $25 for two shots each person.
The vaccine is actually being purchased by East Shore District Health Department, Joseph told the BOS, with towns in the region essentially working together to purchase doses.
Joseph emphasized that all these discussions are ongoing, and that everything was “very early” to talk about, with pharmaceutical giant Pfizer only just announcing an early analysis of its vaccine on Nov. 9.
“Still a work in progress, but obviously the first people in line will be our first responders: police, fire, EMS,” Joseph said.
The cost is also an extremely rough “ballpark” estimate that has been used regionally, according to Joseph, and is “subject to change,” with still very little known about the vaccine. Joseph added it was impossible to guess what the final costs and how much, if any, will be borne by the town.
Questions about whether individuals will have to pay for the vaccine themselves are “premature,” Joseph said, as none of those details are anywhere close to being worked out.
The $27,000 is part of a larger, 30-month grant, with another $27,000 allocated for 2021-’22, and another approximately $14,000 for the second half of 2022.