The Kenai City Council accepted and appropriated a grant from the Alaska Department of Health and Social Services for community funding to improve efforts and increase access to COVID-19 testing and vaccinations through a vaccination program. The city was approved for funding up to $326,985.32 to support its efforts to increase access to COVID-19 vaccinations on the Kenai Peninsula. By accepting the grant, the city would agree to expand capacity for the vaccine administration through mobile vaccination clinics. It also would support vaccination communication and education efforts and purchase supplies and equipment for the vaccine administration.
Kenai Fire Chief Tony Prior, “The state is trying to get the opportunity for people to be vaccinated or COVID testing or anything that has to do with the COVID out in any public, any community in Alaska. It was based on the population of each community. Ours, as you may have seen, we were able to get just under 327,000 based on our population. We worked with the group that put this together with the state and kind of tried to figure out with the borough, with the city of Soldotna, Soldotna Professional Pharmacy and kind of the groups that were already performing a lot of the testing and vaccinations within all of the central peninsula here and how we can go about getting this out. It’s really there for the people that didn’t have access to the mask clinics that we were doing. We tried to figure out where our lane, so-to-speak, can be for the city and for our fire department and what we could do.”
Section one of the ordinance states that the City Manager is authorized to accept the funding in the amount of $326,985.32 from the state of Alaska. In a memo to the city, Chief Prior says that a reserve ambulance will also be staffed in order to deliver vaccines by weekly appointments.
Additionally, Prior said, “It takes care of the personnel time whether it’s straight time, overtime, it’s all reimbursable expenses. The state still has a cache of supplies so we can submit to get into them, but if we happen to purchase some of them, we can submit in and it’s all reimbursed.”
The ordinance was enacted by council after a motion for introduction, motion for second reading and motion for adoption passed.