Amesbury clinic hits 10,000 vaccinations

Apr. 6—AMESBURY — Saturday marked a milestone for the Lower Merrimack Valley Regional Collaborative when volunteers administered their 10,000th COVID-19 vaccination at Amesbury High School.

Amesbury, Groveland, Georgetown, Merrimac, Newbury, West Newbury, Rowley, Salisbury and Newburyport have joined together to form the Lower Merrimack Valley Regional Collaborative, which has spent the past four weekends running COVID-19 vaccination clinics at Amesbury High School.

According to communications director Caitlin Thayer, a pair of cakes were brought out to the volunteer clinic workers to mark the 10,000th vaccination on Saturday, April 3.

"Every weekend gets better and better," Thayer said. "We keep improving the clinic, our processes, the way we work with volunteers and we are very excited about it."

Acting Health Director and Fire Chief Ken Berkenbush said he is excited about the progress the collaborative has made.

"We have upped our capacity and our throughput. We have also worked some of the kinks out of it," Berkenbush said. "We were doing about 1,200 folks a day for a little while and we're going to be up over 2,000 doses a day, from here on out. So, the next 10,000 is going to be a really short time from now."

Vaccination clinics will continue at AHS this Saturday and Sunday, April 20 and 11.

"We have been moving into primarily second dose clinics for the first handful of weeks that we have been doing this," Thayer said. "In addition to that, we are doing more first doses as well. We have increased the number of people that we are taking in, everyday."

Berkenbush said the collaborative hopes to vaccinate 2,000 people a day at its AHS vaccination clinics from here on.

"That's 4,000 people over the weekend and it is 16,000 in the course of a month," he said. "That first milestone is hard but after that, it just gains momentum and off we go."

A pair of vaccination clinics for food service and restaurant workers will also be held at the West Newbury Town Hall Annex this Wednesday, April 7 and Thursday April 8.

"We have been looking at the hardest hit groups and industries and the demographics that affects the entire population as a whole," Berkenbush said. "Teachers were one of the goals that we hit and that next demographic that has been really hard hit are the restaurant employees."

According to Berkenbush, Wednesday and Thursday's clinics will also mark the first time the collaborative will make use of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine.

"We got a bonus shipment, if you will," he said. "Johnson & Johnson doesn't need a second dose, so this is one and done and you can go and move about the country."

The Johnson & Johnson vaccine will also be used for vaccinating people who are homebound beginning this week.

"We're going to create a mini, mobile vaccination unit and be up and running by the end of the week," he said.

Thayer said there are now three different vaccines (from Moderna, Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson) making the rounds.

"We are getting phone calls now from people who have a preference of vaccines," Thayer said. "They have heard that the side effects of one particular vaccine for certain medical conditions is worse or better with them or the efficacy is better than one or the other. We are going to take whatever the state can give us and we give them out."

First dose appointments can be made at https://www.maimmunizations.org//reg/1560224906.

Staff writer Jim Sullivan covers Amesbury and Salisbury for The Daily News. He can be reached via email at jsullivan@newburyportnews.com or by phone at 978-961-3145. Follow him on Twitter @ndnsully.