While the Guthrie County Department of Public Health was hoping to begin COVID-19 vaccinations Monday, delays from the Food and Drug Administration’s approval process forced some changes.

Public Health Director Jotham Arber says his department was ready for this situation.

“We had planned for Wednesday as our first clinic just to give us a couple of days. We’re still planning to do that clinic. We just may not be able to do as many people, but our plan here especially with this first round is to host [points of distribution] every Wednesday and push that a month, two months out so that if the allocation is less, it’ll just mean that we’ll have to bump some people to the next week, which isn’t necessarily all that bad.”

Arber also pointed out that this distribution system will help ensure organizations and providers can continue their work as the process continues.

“The hospital has 151 employees and vaccinating them all at the same time especially if they might have some soreness of arms and fatigue and some of those common things we see with this vaccine. If they all get it at once, we may have providers that are out and if they’re all out, that will create hiccups. To be on the safe side, we’re asking them to stagger and have some get it first and roll out over the next seven days.”

Guthrie County cannot receive the Pfizer vaccine due to storage requirements.