Multnomah County Tries New Approaches to Fight COVID Crisis

Oregon’s reached a grim milestone of more than 2500 COVID-19 related deaths, and a new, fourth surge in cases.
As many Oregon counties are in the “extreme risk” category, a race is on to get more people vaccinated.

KXL talked to the leader of Oregon’s most populated county about the crisis.
She says a different approach is required, to get to hard to reach people.
In her county and many others, “The virus is expanding so rapidly right now,” says Multnomah County Chair Deborah Kafoury.

She says getting vaccinated and following COVID guidelines, just doesn’t work easily for some folks, including front line workers. “They might not have the resources to take time off of work, to stay home, to quarantine. And so one of our jobs is to help provide those services so people can isolate and get the medical help they need, and then, protect their families as well.”

She says the county is trying new approaches, aimed at getting harder to reach people vaccinated.

“If English is not your first language or if you don’t even speak English it’s pretty hard to navigate the website and to get signed up, and then to show up at the convention center can be really daunting. So we’re trying to make it easy so more people can get vaccinated.”

Others are homebound, and not able to go to the convention center to get the shots.
She says the county’s now trying to reach them through special efforts.   “We’ve actually done mobile vaccine clinics where the providers go to folks homes.”