Marion County rolls out new COVID-19 weapon

Marion County is rolling out a new tactic in the war on COVID-19: a mobile vaccination clinic for downtown visitors and workers to stop in and get a shot on their lunch hour.

“As workers are heading back to their office, some for the first time in over a year, it is essential that they get vaccinated,” Dr. Virginia Caine, director of the Marion County Public Health Department, said Thursday.

Standing before a brightly colored, 40-foot-long bus parked on Monument Circle, Caine urged people to stop in on their lunch break and get a shot.

The bus, adorned with a “COVID-19 Mobile Unit” sign on the side, is actually a mobile dental unit, with two dental chairs, that has been pressed into service to help the county increase its vaccination rate.

As of Sunday, 41.8% of Marion County residents, or 403,274 people, had been vaccinated, according to the county health department’s COVID-19 dashboard.

The county percentage rate has barely budged since it hit 40% on June 23, even though the health department has used pop-up clinics and promoted vaccinations at hospitals, pharmacies and primary care offices.

That means more than half of Marion County population aged 12 and over have yet to be vaccinated, even as mutations of the virus, including the fast-spreading delta variant, are rapidly spreading through the unvaccinated population.

The delta variant now represents more than half of all new cases of COVID-19 cases in the U.S., Caine said.

Marion County has seen a recent increase in COVID cases, with an average of 79 new cases daily over the past three days, up from an average of fewer than 24 new cases per day during the last week of June.

So far, the mobile clinic seems to be off to a modest start. It was parked on the Circle for four hours on Wednesday, its first day in service, but vaccinated only 25 people during that time, or about six per hour.

Health workers talked to another 80 people who had questions about the vaccine, including effectiveness and side effects, but those people declined to get a shot, Caine said.

The goal is to vaccinate federal and city employees as well as other workers and visitors downtown.

“I think if we can reach at least 50 people a day for a vaccination (with the mobile unit), I would be extremely happy,” Caine said.

She pointed out the vaccinations are free and could be done in less than an hour on a person’s lunch hour.

She was joined in the press conference by officials of Marion County Superior Court, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Indiana, and a representative for Mayor Joe Hogsett.

Tanya Pratt, chief judge of the U.S. District Court in Indianapolis, endorsed the county’s latest effort to get people vaccinated.

“One of our greatest concerns is we want our visitors, our staff, the litigants who appear before us to have access to the vaccination,” she said. “We firmly believe that justice is best dispensed when justice is done in person, for the most part.”

The van will be parked at the federal building and U.S. Courthouse, 46 E. Ohio St., from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Wednesday, July 21, and Thursday, July 22.