Mayor Joseph Polisena continued to voice his support for more regional COVID-19 vaccination pods during an interview with the Sun Rise on Monday, citing no issues in Johnston’s first week and offering to open the recreation center to other towns.
Recommendations from Gov. Gina Raimondo and Department of Health Director Dr. Nicole Alexander-Scott to reduce the number of vaccination centers around the state have met opposition from incoming Gov. Dan McKee and members of his COVID-19 advisory group. Both Polisena and Dr. John Stoukides, the co-chairs of the board, have told the Sun Rise they are in favor of establishing more pods around the Ocean State for a more community-based approach. The counterargument centers on easier and more efficient dosage distribution at fewer sites.
“I’m a believer in the local pods, and they can work hand-in-hand with the regional pods,” Polisena said. “Gov. McKee has some ideas what he wants to do. Not every city and town is going to have a local pod, and I understand that. I called the [Town] Council president from Scituate, and I said to her if she needs a location she can use our sports complex. I’d be willing to have other smaller communities use it also. To send people from Johnston to Cranston or to Providence at the Dunkin’ [Donuts] Center, especially some of the elderly people, that’s very difficult.”
McKee said during an advisory group meeting last Friday that he doesn’t envision pods in all 39 cities and towns, but the total would be more than the RIDOH’s proposed six or seven. Polisena said the Johnston pod is proof of concept – vaccinating hundreds of residents in a timely manner while potentially opening the door for neighboring communities to use it as well. The mayor said he has reached out Scituate officials offering the facility if they would like to use it.
“I think people feel a heck of a lot more comfortable – we are still getting calls today, people can’t believe how smooth it was,” Polisena said. “[McKee] saw first-hand how well it was. I’ve participated in regional pods, but with our pod what we did was we enhanced a lot of what the regional pods did. For instance, we had our firefighters walking through where [people] were waiting, talking to them, to make sure they were OK.”
Polisena said Feb. 17’s opening day for inoculations served as a sort of socially distanced reunion for some elderly people who haven’t left their homes most of the past year.
“They haven’t been out in a while, so they were getting to talk to their friends and neighbors that were there, so it became sort of social, even though we had social distancing and they all wore masks,” Polisena said. “It became kind of a social event, and I’m not saying that’s what it should be, but they’ve been locked up since last March. It’s going to be a year soon, so I think the local pods play a very important role.”
Polisena said Town Hall received upwards of 100 phone calls on Monday morning after the state sign-up website crashed. He added that of the 250 vaccination appointments scheduled for last Wednesday, the town was responsible for setting up about 75 percent of them.
There are no tweaks planned for the pod this week, the mayor said, and there were no adverse reactions and only a couple of people experienced some slight dizziness.
“We had a couple people have a couple of issues, but it wasn’t because of the shot,” Polisena said. “They hadn’t been out in a long time and they walked from the outside to the inside so they maybe got a little dizzy, but there was nothing according to Dr. Stoukides that had to do with anything that if they felt a little weak or felt a little dizzy. We had the Police Explorers there, they were able to help the people in and out on wheelchairs, who needed wheelchair access.”
The mayor praised Police Chief Joseph Razza, Johnston Police, Johnston Fire, the Department of Public Works, town workers and the recreation department for the all-hands-on-deck effort. The community bond wasn’t lost on McKee, either.
“He saw the way ours worked,” Polisena said. “I walked him around and he was observing the way people were coming in and out and they were coming up to him saying, ‘This was great.’ And a lot of people were very happy, and there was no hiccups, and as I said, local pods give it that local flavor, so to speak, especially when you're dealing with the elderly … If they say to us, do you want to be a regional pod for a few communities, we would look into that.”
He added: “We just want to get rid of this enemy, the COVID, so I want to protect the people in Johnston of course, first and foremost, but I have no problem helping out the other communities because we’re all in this together.”
Polisena reiterated his desire to vaccinate residents at congregate settings like Cherry Hill Apartments and Simmons Village, among others, saying again that he would go in with some firefighters and administer shots himself.
“We’ll go right on their scene, into their premises to get that done,” Polisena said. “We’re going to be looking for help from the people who manage these facilities to get these people registered because they need to do that. We’re looking at that next, but they’ve got to give us the vaccine. … We don’t have enough product in, for whatever reason that is, if it’s logistics, if it’s the federal government, we don’t know what it is, but we should be getting a lot more than we have.”
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