Partnership Health to Host Vaccination Clinic in Seeley Lake

On Monday, February 8 from 8:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m., Partnership Health Center will be providing 200 doses of the Pfizer COVID 19 vaccine to residents in Seeley Lake, who have already been contacted.

Eric Halverson, Communications and Development Administrator at Partnership Health Center, serving as the Public Information Officer for their COVID 19 response, provided details of Monday’s clinic.

“We're really excited to have the first drive thru clinic in Missoula County for 200 patients out in Seeley Lake,” said Halverson. “Partnership Health Center runs the Seeley Swan Medical Center out there in Seeley. We have about 700 patients who qualify for the Phase 1 B of the vaccine rollout and so we're pleased to be able to offer 200 of the vaccines this Monday at Seeley Lake High School.”

Halverson, like other health officials wants the public to know that the only reason for so many small vaccination clinics is simply a lack of supply nationwide.

“It's really important that people understand that the great limiting step here the constricting factor and ability to distribute the vaccine more broadly is the supply of the vaccine,” he said. “In a perfect world, we'd be vaccinating everybody in our community right away. We're obviously going in a phased approach in accordance with the state and the federal government's plan. So we decided that in order to control some of the traffic on our phone lines, we would do the reaching out and that's been working well for us.”

Like the two Missoula clinics so far, the clinic in Seeley Lake will not allow any walk-in traffic.

“It's important that folks know that this isn't a walk in clinic, so it's not open to the public,” he said. “We hope that it serves as a pilot for future clinics to make sure that we get obviously the entire Phase 1 B, and moving forward the entire population of Missoula County everybody who wants a vaccine vaccinated, but for now, this is a closed clinic. So we ask that folks don't call Partnership Health Center or Missoula County with requests to get an appointment at this clinic. If you've heard from us, you should know if you have an appointment with this clinic for sure.”

Halverson provided a heads-up about some of the paperwork that will be required before patients are vaccinated.

“There are three documents,” he said. “Two are just important informational documents about the Pfizer vaccine, and about tracking the vaccine afterwards. That's with the CDC, and the final one is really the most important, which is just an informational document that you would fill out when you show up at a doctor's office, so that's just making sure people don't have allergies and things like that. We've provided instructions to every patient who got an appointment at this clinic about when and where to pick those documents up.”

Sunday’s clinic in Missoula vaccinated 800 people and the 650 online spots went in less that five minutes, with the remaining 150 via phone in less than 40 minutes.