How to get a COVID vaccination in Oregon
As of March 1, everyone in Phase 1A and groups 1-5 of Phase 1B is eligible for the COVID-19 vaccine in Oregon. That includes:
- Health care workers and first responders
- Long-term care residents
- K-12 educators and school staff
- Childcare providers
- People 65 and older
The sign-up process for COVID-19 vaccination in the Portland metro area changed again on March 1. Rather than hundreds of thousands of people scrambling to find thousands of appointments, eligible people will be notified when a dose is available for them. The state will use the information people have submitted at the state's Get Vaccinated Oregon tool as an invitation system. The names of eligible people in the metro area will be gleaned from the Get Vaccinated Oregon database and their information will be sent to the state's partners at the Oregon Convention Center, one of Oregon's mass vaccination sites.
I've been fully vaccinated. Now what?
Fully-vaccinated Americans can gather with other vaccinated people indoors without wearing a mask or social distancing, according to long-awaited guidance from federal health officials.
The recommendations also say that vaccinated people can come together in the same way with people considered at low risk for severe disease, such as in the case of vaccinated grandparents visiting healthy children and grandchildren.
Oregon gets $110M from FEMA to help with administering 2 million vaccine doses
The Oregon Health Authority (OHA) on Monday announced the state was awarded $110 million in federal funding from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to help get people vaccinated against COVID-19.
FEMA-supported vaccination centers will be able to administer more than 2 million doses over a 90-day period that has yet to be determined, OHA said.
Oregon Gov. Kate Brown receives Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine
Gov. Kate Brown was vaccinated against COVID-19 at a rural health clinic in Scappoose on Saturday. In a statement, Brown said she wanted to make a point about the Johnson & Johnson vaccine after hearing false rumors questioning its efficacy since it was approved for emergency use by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Feb. 27.
PDX mass vaccination site hits snag, people wait hours to get vaccinated
The drive-through mass vaccination clinic at the Portland International Airport opened in late January. Since then more than 40,000 vaccine doses have gone into arms at the PDX economy parking lot.
Last weekend the sun shone through at times Sunday, and operations seemed pretty smooth before noon. But Saturday was arguably the toughest day so far. Some people tell us they waited several hours to get through.
Yes, the first and second doses of the COVID vaccines are the same
To answer this question, the VERIFY team reached out to Dr. Anna Wald, a board-certified physician at the University of Washington’s School of Medicine. In addition, Dr. Wald serves as the director of UW’s Virology Research Clinic at Harborview Medical Center in Seattle.
“What is injected is exactly the same,” she said.
Dr. Wald said while there’s no difference between the first and second doses, how people react to the second dose is often different from how they reacted to the first.
