A mobile COVID-19 vaccination clinic will be in Old Town this Saturday, giving out doses of the single-shot Johnson & Johnson vaccine to residents of some of Penobscot County’s most rural towns.
The clinic will take place outside the Old Town Public Safety Building (home of Old Town’s police and fire department) at 150 Brunswick Road from May 22 to May 25. Everyone 18 and older will be eligible, though Mainers can sign up for appointments at a vaccination portal run by the state. Drop-in appointments will also be available on a first-come, first-serve basis.
The implementation of mobile vaccine units, and other small-scale, personalized efforts to vaccinate people, will be integral to achieving herd immunity in Maine as many remain unvaccinated, especially in rural communities. About 51 percent of Mainers are partially or fully vaccinated, a number that is a far cry from the 70 percent or higher immunization number often cited by medical officials as to when society can go back to normal.
The clinic is a joint effort of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Maine Emergency Management Agency, the Maine Department of Health and Human Services, the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention and the Old Town police and fire departments.
Collectively, they are trying to reach the Mainers who didn’t receive one of the more than 100,000 doses administered at Northern Light Health’s mass vaccination site at the Cross Insurance Center. The center is expected to close later this month after shrinking demand led Northern Light to move its Penobscot County operations to its health clinic on Union Street in Bangor.
Demand by Mainers for the Johnson & Johnson vaccine was an important reason why the mobile clinic is offering the Johnson & Johnson shot, Maine CDC spokesperson Robert Long said. Not requiring the second appointment necessary for the two-shot Pfizer BioNTech and Moderna vaccines also made sense for a three-day-long mobile vaccine station, Long said.
Officials chose Old Town as the site of the mobile clinic because its relative proximity to several rural towns fanned out to the north of Bangor, Penobscot County Emergency Management Agency Director Bradley Nuding said.
Officials also hope that the clinic will attract a high number of young students living in the Old Town and Orono area, where the University of Maine is located, who have yet to get vaccinated and who officials believe might be more willing to get vaccinated if it only requires one shot, Nuding said.
Maine’s mobile coronavirus vaccine clinic has now administered more than 8,500 doses of the COVID-19 vaccine since April, Long said, traveling to Oxford, Windham, Biddeford, Fryeburg, Turner and Waterville. Clinics in Milbridge, Calais, Madawaska, Pittsfield, Rumford, Rangeley and Limington, among other locations, are planned in the next few months.
The initial rollout of the vaccine saw issues and Maine temporarily stopped administering it on April 13 after the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention asked it and other states to do so. Six women had developed blood clots after receiving the vaccine, out of 7 million Americans who had been inoculated with it.
Maine resumed administering the shots on April 24, after an 11-day pause, in line with federal guidelines. Asked if the Maine CDC was worried people might be hesitant to take the Johnson & Johnson vaccine due to the pause, Long noted that side effects had been “exceedingly rare.”
“None of the rare adverse effects that caused federal authorities to briefly pause authorization of the J&J vaccine have been confirmed in Maine,” Long said.
Nuding, who since December has led his agency’s COVID-19 efforts as it delivered persona; protective equipment and testing supplies throughout the state, said he was excited to be part of a clinic that would help stem COVID-19 infections in Maine.
“I think it’s a great opportunity to give those that have been hesitant about getting the vaccine another option,” Nuding said.