
Douglas County Health Director Adi Pour said Wednesday that the health department will begin vaccinating educators next week. “We are now at a time when we can vaccinate them,” Pour said.
Douglas County Health Director Adi Pour announced Wednesday that the health department will begin vaccinating educators in the county next week.
Pour said the department will continue to devote 90% of the doses the county receives to vaccinating seniors. The educator doses will come from the 10% that health departments are authorized to put toward vaccinating essential worker groups as laid out in the state’s priority system.
The county, she said, has largely completed vaccinations for the employee groups listed ahead of educators.
“We are now at a time when we can vaccinate them,” Pour said.
Because the doses available for educators will be limited at first, Pour said, school superintendents will work with their human resources departments to prioritize educators according to age and underlying health conditions and give those lists to the health department.
The department will vaccinate educators according to the percentage of students enrolled in the district.
In the beginning, the health department will focus on K-12 educators, Pour said. That’s because the American Academy of Pediatrics has emphasized the importance of in-person learning for school-age children.
Health officials didn’t have an immediate tally of how many people would fall into the educator group. The state’s list includes teachers and support staff in public and private schools, as well as those in higher education and childcare centers.
Robert Miller, president of the Omaha Education Association, said Pour’s announcement was great to hear.
“We’re moving in the right direction,” he said.
Miller said the group’s understanding is that the district has prioritized employees into tiers.
“The next question is, when is this going to take place, and that has yet to be decided,” he said.
Some OPS staff have already been vaccinated because they fall into other priority groups, he said.
“There’s 4,100 teachers in our district, and you throw in the other districts within Douglas County, and it’ll be a while before everyone is 100% vaccinated,” he said.
Pour stressed that the health department has been committed to working with educators from the beginning of the pandemic, starting in March to support efforts to reopen schools if districts chose to do so.
Since then, the department has worked to identify new cases and assist with contact tracing when cases were reported among students and educators.
“I want to make sure the educators in Douglas County recognize how important educators are to us, to the health department, to myself, to this community overall,” she said. “We value their efforts.”
Pour, however, said she does not like the fact that the issue has become political. She said she does not make decisions based on political input.
In a letter Monday, four Omaha-area school and city officials joined teachers unions in pushing to ensure school employees get a share of vaccines.
Last week, leaders of the Nebraska State Education Association appealed to Nebraska Gov. Pete Ricketts to ensure that local health officials were including teachers in their distribution.
Pour said the prioritization schedule was developed so that it could be applied across the entire state.
“We have followed it very closely, and so have all the other local health departments,” she said.
Ricketts said Wednesday that Pour is correctly adhering to state guidance on who to vaccinate first.
The state, Ricketts said, still wants the state’s health departments to direct 90% of vaccines to residents 65 and older. Eighty-three percent of the state’s COVID-19-related deaths have occurred in that age group.
Ricketts said public safety jobs — first responders, utility workers and the staff of homeless shelters and corrections institutions, in that order — come first. After that will be teachers, he said.
Homeless shelters give people in need a place to stay, corrections facilities need to stay open and safe, and utility workers keep the power on, he said.
“During this cold snap, we can all see why that’s important as a public safety issue,” he said.
He said health departments are supposed to focus on mission-critical employees, but there could be some instances where someone who’s not mission-critical gets a vaccine.
“When you’re probably hearing that, it’s not because somebody was signed up in line along with those critical infrastructure folks,” Ricketts said. “It was somebody who was available at the end of the day, last moment, to be able to get the vaccine because we didn’t want the vaccine to go to waste.”
Pour also stressed that each health department is different. When a caller informed her that Washington County was vaccinating teachers, she checked with the local health director, who assured her that they had gotten through their smaller group of critical workers and were in a position to move on to teachers.
Douglas County, on the other hand, is home to four health systems, large law enforcement agencies, utilities and correctional facilities as well as multiple homeless shelters.
Some of their employees live outside the county. The health department has administered 95,636 doses of vaccine, 72,957 of which have gone to Douglas County residents. That means 22,679 of doses have gone to non-Douglas County residents.
Pour said she also has been receiving questions about whether Douglas County is getting its share, based on population, of the vaccine coming into the state.
Her department expects to receive 10,660 doses of vaccine next week, up from 7,250 first doses this week.
The 10,660 doses works out to 29.5% of the 36,620 doses the state is slated to get next week, minus 500 doses it will set aside for state facilities, Pour said. That matches the county’s population.
Ricketts’ office said that, to date, Douglas County has received 35% of the state’s shot allocation, larger than its 29% share of the population. That’s because shots went to health care providers based on their number of employees.
Going forward, the county will be receiving 29%, based on its population share.
In Lincoln, Mayor Leirion Gaylor Baird said Tuesday that if all goes well, based on current vaccine supply, vaccinations of Lincoln teachers could start in three weeks.
World-Herald Staff Writer Henry J. Cordes contributed to this report.
Our best Omaha staff photos of February 2021

Kearney's Richard Harbols dives in the boys Nebraska state dive competition on Thursday.

Lincoln Southeast's Katerina Hoffman competes in the NSAA state diving championship on Thursday.

North Platte's Jonathan Brouillette is reflected in the swimming pool as he competes in the NSAA boys state diving championship on Thursday.

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Omaha Skutt's Adam Kruse, left, and Gothenberg's Abe Mendez, right, wrestle during a Class B 138 pound match.

Millard South's Joel Adams celebrates after defeating North Platte's Darian Diaz during the Class A 138 pound championship match.

A few snowflakes fell in Omaha on Wednesday.

Creighton's Greg McDermott congratulates Denzel Mahoney on a made 3-pointer against Villanova.

Gretna's John Weed, facing, and Millard South's Antrell Taylor compete in the first round of the 160 pound, Class A state wrestling tournament in Omaha on Wednesday.

Frost collects on a sheet of ice in a parking lot in South Omaha on Tuesday. Omaha set a record low on Tuesday, dipping to 23 degrees below zero.

PJ Smith, an administrator at Grand Island Northwest, helps set up mats on Tuesday for the state wrestling tournament at the CHI Health Center. The tournament starts today and runs through Saturday. Read more in Sports.

Dr. Michael Howard listens to the heart of Bella, a Boston terrier puppy at Best Care Pet Hospital In Omaha on Tuesday, February 16, 2021. Bella was anesthetized before power was cut to the south Omaha neighborhood where they are located because of extreme temperatures in the region. Omaha's low Dr. Howard was prepping to spay Bella by window light before the power did come back on. They had performed one surgery with no power already that morning.

Neymar walks around in a sweater after a power outage at Best Care Pet Hospital at 3030 L Street on Tuesday, February 16, 2021. Extreme temperatures forces rolling blackouts in the area.

Sunlight filters through the steam as cars head east on Leavenworth Street towards 16th Street as the low in the area was close to 20 degrees below zero on Tuesday, February 16, 2021.

Steam rises out of the Missouri River around the Interstate 480 bridge as viewed from Tom Hanafan River's Edge Park in Council Bluffs early Tuesday, Feb. 16. Lows in the Omaha metro area were around 23 degrees below zero. The steam caused icy roads and the temporary closure of the bridge.

Owner Gary Wrenn moves catfish filets from the cornmeal dredge to the fryers at Cajun Kitchen on 30th and Maple Streets in Omaha on Monday.

Firefighters work to put out a fire in an apartment building at 10th and William Street in Omaha on Monday.

Omaha's Matt Miller (27) moves behind the net, near Colorado College's Matthew Gleason (15), Brian Hawkinson (29) and Matt Vernon (30) in the Colorado College vs. Omaha hockey game at the Baxter Arena in Omaha on Friday. The Mavericks won the game 7-1.

Erin Gramke gives Sigurd Sorenson his second dose of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine at the VA Medical Center in Omaha on Thursday. Sorenson, 84, served in the Army.

Rev. Ralph Lassiter sits inside Kohl's Pharmacy during the observation period after his second COVID-19 vaccine on Wednesday. Rev. Lassiter wants to set a good example for his community by receiving the COVID-19 vaccine and stressing its' safety.

The Bellevue West bench celebrates a three-pointer in the Waukee vs. Bellevue West boys basketball game on Tuesday. Bellevue West won the game 74-60.

Hand-painted bonbons for a Valentine's Day special are flavored with, from left, raspberry, passion fruit, vanilla bean salted caramel and milk chocolate, from Sugar Makery BitterSweet in Council Bluffs.

A Gibson Les Paul is one of more than 70 guitars in the exhibit.

A crane lifts a small plane that had its landing gear collapse while landing at Eppley Airfield on Friday. Two people were on board the plane; neither was injured.

Creighton's Damien Jefferson is called for a foul against Georgetown's Jamorko Pickett at CHI HealthCenter on Wednesday, February 03, 2021.

Avante Dickerson talks to members of the media after he announced he was signing to play football at the University of Oregon at Omaha Westside High School on Wednesday, February 3, 2021.

Rime ice forms on the trees at the Chalco Hills Recreation Area on Tuesday, February 02, 2021.

Two people jog around Prairie Queen Recreation Area as a freezing fog covers the region on Tuesday, February 02, 2021.

Frost hangs onto a fence in Omaha on Tuesday, February 02, 2021.
julie.anderson@owh.com, 402-444-1066, twitter.com/julieanderson41
Dr. Adi Pour has announced at today’s Board of Health meeting that we will begin vaccinating educators next week. @nedhhs @OWHnews @omaha_scanner @3NewsNowOmaha @WOWT6News pic.twitter.com/pOQr2hH1KR
— DouglasCoHealthDept (@HealthDouglasCo) February 17, 2021