Some ISU faculty and staff receive the COVID-19 Vaccine

Photo courtesy to ISU Facebook page

NORMAL, Ill.- Vaccinations were distributed on ISU’s campus to those faculty and staff who received an email and registered.

“We kind of started off with healthcare workers and first responders. The state’s 1B criteria now allows people 65 years of age or older and also people that are teaching in K-12 schools to receive vaccination.  So our lab schools, the faculty there, are eligible for this as well,” said ISU spokesperson Eric Jome. “Or any of our employees that are 65 years of age or older.”

McLean County gives a small allotment of the vaccine, today’s Jan. 29 was  around 300 people.  So emails were sent out to people on campus that met the 1B criteria to sign up on a first come,  first serve basis.

The list of registered ISU faculty was kept at the injection site, The Bone Student Center.

Teachers in the 1B criteria were able to sign up for a time to get the vaccine.

“As we get more vaccines in the future from the health department, we’ll be able to do more of these vaccination clinics for people that are in those criteria,” said Jome.

The vaccine phases are rolling out fast. First the student health services workers and the Mennonite College of Nursing faculty and students, who are working in clinical settings, received the vaccine. Now teachers in K-12 labs on ISU campus…but when are students going to receive the vaccine?

“Being able to distribute this to students…that’s unknown. But certainly when we find that out and more of this is available we’ll be communicating that to campus and getting things set up for distribution. But at this time we’re not really certain what the timeframe is depending on availability of vaccine,” said Jome.

Some Illinois, republican lawmakers are calling on Governor Pritzker to provide explanation why Illinois ranks 47th in getting vaccines distributed.

“What we are emphasizing is there’s a lot of people interested in getting the vaccine and we are trying emphasize this is a small amount and follow along with the state’s criteria for who’s eligible at the time.”