COVID-19: the vaccination campaign

January — December 2021

From the first clinic to the mass clinic at Notre Dame: The county's vaccination campaign opened on 8 January 2021, when the St. Joseph County Department of Health launched its vaccination clinic and opened registration to the state's first eligible classes — residents aged eighty and older, and licensed and unlicensed health-care workers and first responders with face-to-face patient contact. The two vaccines then available, Pfizer's and Moderna's, each required two doses. The department's own summary data mark the campaign's first weeks: as of 11 February 2021, 30,564 first doses had been administered to county residents and 8,957 residents were fully vaccinated; a week later, as of 18 February, first doses stood at 35,081 and the fully vaccinated at 13,519. The campaign's largest single stroke came on the university's ground: on 26 and 27 March 2021, a state-organized drive-through mass clinic at Notre Dame's Compton Family Ice Arena administered the one-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine to nearly 6,000 Indiana residents — capacity 5,760 appointments, booked out days in advance — staffed by about 300 people, most of them from the Indiana Department of Health, the Indiana National Guard, and the county health department, and aimed at the general public of the whole region, not the university community.

The county clinic itself moved through the city's own buildings as the year ran: by May 2021 it was accepting walk-ins at the St. Hedwig Memorial Center on South Scott Street, open to everyone sixteen and older; by August it operated from the main lobby of the County-City Building downtown; and in November 2021, with Pfizer vaccine open to everyone aged five and older, it was extending Saturday hours in that lobby. Around the fixed sites the campaign went mobile: a mobile clinic at the Walkerton-Lincoln Township Library on 21 May 2021; an Indiana Department of Health strike team offering testing and vaccination at Four Winds Field, the city's ballpark, from 6 to 9 October 2021; and, in the last days of the year, mobile testing and vaccination teams at Impact Ministries on East Tutt Street and La Casa de Amistad on South Michigan Street, 20–22 December 2021, offering all three vaccines and booster doses. The campaign prints here at the size of the department's releases and the university's account; no county-wide final vaccination total is stated in the record, and none is printed.

Sources:

1. St. Joseph County Department of Health releases (in.gov/localhealth/stjosephcounty/files/) — the clinic launch of 8 January 2021 and its first eligibility classes; the department's COVID-19 Summary Data of 12 and 19 February 2021 (first doses 30,564, fully vaccinated 8,957, as of 11 February; 35,081 and 13,519 as of 18 February); the walk-in clinic at St. Hedwig Memorial Center (6 May 2021); the County-City Building clinic hours (3 August 2021) and extended Saturday hours with ages five and older (5 November 2021); the Walkerton mobile clinic (20 May 2021); the Four Winds Field strike team (4 October 2021); and the mobile testing and vaccination teams of 20–22 December 2021.
2. Notre Dame News / Notre Dame Global Health, "Notre Dame to operate mass vaccination clinic for northern Indiana residents March 26 and 27" (2 March 2021), and Notre Dame Magazine, "A Shot in the Arm" — the Compton Family Ice Arena clinic: the Johnson & Johnson one-dose vaccine, capacity 5,760, nearly 6,000 vaccinated, about 300 staff from the state health department, the National Guard, and the county health department.