Central Hosts Multiple Vaccine Clinics

‘A Bright Light’ — Central, Fitzgibbon Team Up in Vaccination Effort

By Emily Kesel

After a year of cancelled events, Zoom meetings, and social distancing measures becoming the norm, life has begun to look a little more like it did before the COVID-19 pandemic. There’s still a long way to go, but on the campus of Central Methodist University and in Fayette and the surrounding area, the effort to vaccinate as many people as possible has already had quite an impact.

In early April, Fitzgibbon Hospital President and CEO Angy Littrell, ‘90, estimated that her hospital had already provided more than 12,000 vaccine shots, and a significant portion of those were administered right in the heart of Fayette on the CMU campus.

“When we became a vaccinator, we started reaching out knowing that we’d have to do it in a mass-vax kind of area where we could have a lot of people,” said Littrell. “We reached out to the towns that we wanted to go to, places such as CMU, and I reached out to Dr. Roger Drake and Julee Sherman and said, ‘Hey, we are going to have the vaccine and we want to take care of the community. Could we collaborate?’”

And, of course, CMU was happy to oblige. With the university already using the Phillips-Robb Recreation Center to perform mass testing of its students every other week, administrators knew they had the space and the personnel needed to host the vaccination clinics. And, as a bonus, it would be a convenient spot for the Central community to get vaccinated.

“We were just so pleased that they asked us to do this, because we can help make our campus and our students safer,” said Sherman, vice president for finance and administration. “It’s a great opportunity for our employees and our students to get vaccinated at a very convenient place, and we have a great facility that can host it. It’s just worked out well for all of us.”

While Central provided the facility and a few volunteers to set up and greet, Fitzgibbon personnel made up the whole workforce within the clinic itself. Littrell applauded her staff’s “fortitude and endurance” throughout the process, noting that everyone working at the clinics still had their regular jobs to do back at the hospital. But even under a “grueling” schedule of 3-4 clinics per week at multiple locations, she and the hospital staff remained excited to do the work of vaccinating the community.

“It’s really been a bright light for us after all the months we’ve been dealing with COVID in the hospital,” said Littrell. “We did lots of testing, and we’ve treated lots of COVID patients, so it was really kind of uplifting for everyone and there was lots of excitement about being part of something way more positive in terms of the pandemic.”

With three counties to cover, Fitzgibbon has been able to spread its positive impact fairly widely. The hospital has medical clinics in Saline, Sheridan, and Howard Counties and has been distributing vaccines in each.

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