Garrett Neese/Daily Mining Gazette Nicole Niemi, a public health nurse with the Western Upper Peninsula Health Department, gives Lawrence Beauchamp his first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine at Heritage Manor in Houghton Monday.

HANCOCK — There still is not enough COVID-19 vaccine to go around for all the residents eligible to take it, but the situation is improving, said Kate Beer.

The state is now able to project supplies out for a couple of weeks, which will make it easier to schedule vaccination clinics, said Beer, health director for the Western Upper Peninsula Health Department.

“That’s good news,” she said. “But there’s just not enough to vaccinate everybody that’s in the target group to be vaccinated.”

The target group in the WUPHD’s five-county area is just above 14,000 people — 70% of those over 65 or who are frontline essential workers. So far, about half that group has gotten vaccines.

There are just now starting to be weeks where it reaches the goal of 1,000 vaccines shipped to the area, Beer said.

Both the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines have been used in the area, though recently the department has only been getting Moderna. That vaccine is shipped in groups of 100, which makes it easier to manage and distribute to partners, Beer said. The Pfizer vaccine is only shipped in a 975-dose brick.

“There’s a lot of vaccines flowing to maybe just one agency, and it’s hard to get that distributed very quickly, because there’s so many restrictions on moving that around,” he said.

With Pfizer, the package of 975 is not supposed to be disturbed more than a couple of times per day. Moderna can also be refrigerated for longer than Pfizer, which has to be used within five days after being thawed.

After a shipment for a first dose, they are automatically placed in the queue to receive the second dose, which is administrated about four weeks later.

Beer estimated finishing vaccinations for the current group could take until the middle of March. It is harder to project when the vaccine might be available to the general public, since that also depends on state guidelines, Beer said.

“They might decide in early March to open that group up but it might not actually be available yet because we’re still catching up with some of the people in Phase 1B (essential workers) and the 65 and over,” she said.

Some level of reaction is expected as the body begins to mount an immune response. They can include redness, headaches and muscle fatigue on the first dose, and feeling ill for one or two days after the second dose. Beyond those, there have been no adverse effects reported locally from the vaccines, Beer said.

In addition to the Health Department, vaccines are available through Aspirus, UP Health — Portage and Baraga County Memorial Hospital, as well as Upper Great Lakes Family Health Center.

The WUPHD is working with other providers to establish a vaccination center on Water Street in Hancock. It is hoped to be open in the next few weeks, as vaccines become more available.

“It would be staffed maybe by different entities on different days, but it would just be a place the community knows is the go-to spot,” Beer said.

Though the vaccine protects against getting sick, it has yet to be conclusively established if it also stops transmission of COVID, Beer said. People who are vaccinated should continue to follow the established safety protocols, including mask-wearing and social distancing.

Area health care providers have seen about 70% of employees opt to get the vaccine, Beer said. Because of the waiting list for larger groups, it’s hard to say what the rate is among the broader pool now eligible, Beer said.

“We’ve got people that might have been offered the first shot, they might be part of the priority group, but they declined it,” she said. “And now that they’re seeing that more people are taking it, they’ve come back to us and said ‘Yeah, I do want it.'”

As vaccination levels rise, the number of new COVID infections in the area has continued to slide. Houghton County’s seven-day average of new cases is at 98 per million, marking a 27-day downward trend that started on Jan. 8, when the number was at 632. The percentage of positive tests has also declined, now at 2%.

With fewer cases, the department has been able to increase contact tracing, Beer said. The department is also following the level of surveillance testing in the community. The seven-day average was at 5,198 tests per million as of Wednesday, down from upwards of 6,000 per day in early December.

“We don’t want to get in a situation where people are sick and we don’t see it because they’re not getting tested,” she said.

Beer is hopeful the COVID positivity numbers will continue to stay low, even with this week’s reopening of bars and indoor dining, and the return of high school sports.

“These are all positive things for the community, and we’re really hopeful by continuing to follow the guidance that’s out there — the masking and the distancing and limiting of people gathering, especially indoors — it will enable us to keep those activities open and open safely,” she said.

Beer said Friday she had received no reports of violations of the relaxed COVI9-19 restrictions for bars and restaurants, including a 25% capacity limit.

“I think everyone’s just excited to be open,” she said.

The CDC has yet to issue recommendations on double-masking, or upgrading from cloth masks to higher filtration masks like KN95s — so named because they filter out 95% of particles 0.3 microns or larger. Beer said at this point, the department is still recommending a mask of at least two to three layers.

“We’re at that point where we just want to make sure people are masking to begin with,” she said.

N95 masks should still be left to the medical community, as there can still be shortages, Beer said. Those also need to be fit-tested to work properly, she said. KN95 masks are similar, but are regulated by the Chinese government and don’t meet the strict U.S. criteria for N95s.

Houghton County has yet to report any cases of the more contagious B-117 variant of COVID-19, Beer said. As of Thursday, 28 cases had been confirmed in the state, all in Wayne and Washtenaw counties. Existing vaccines have also protected against the new variant.

The state has requested that in more severe COVID cases, health providers send a sample to the state lab to test for B-117, Beer said.

The WUPHD has joined most health departments across the state in opposing state House legislation that would tie K-12 school funding to the state ceding control over in-person school closure and school sports to local health departments.

“We don’t really have the data or the mechanisms on the local level to support that,” she said. “It needs to be a broader decision-making process.”