As the federal government is telling states to prepare for a coronavirus vaccine to be ready to distribute by November 1st the Olmsted County Public Health Department says it’s already been preparing.

Director Graham Briggs says the department really started to think about the logistics of distributing a coroanvirus vaccination almost as soon as the pandemic began.

He said, “There are fairly standard plans that have been developed through the years now on utilizing space in the community and being able to have a high through-put and be able to vaccinate in Olmsted County which is over 150,000 people if they all wanted to get vaccinated.”

The department says it will likely receive alimited amount of the vaccine at first. That means it would probably be given to those most at risk such as health care workers, first responders and the elderly.

Briggs also says some people may be hesitant tog et the vaccine out of concern for it’s effectiveness or how safe it may be but he says the health department wouldn’t use a vaccine that wasn’t extensively researched.

He added, “It's something we've been talking with the state is making sure that we're not going to just push out a vaccine because it's there. We need to verify through a number of different sources that whatever we're going to use is both safe and efficacious for our residents.”

At this point the CDC says the vaccines would be distributed to local health departments and hospitals by November 1st.