Beaufort Co. schools announce more vaccine clinics for teachers, staff. What to know
Beaufort County School District has announced two more pop-up vaccine clinics Thursday, following clinics last week that saw 600 school staff get their first dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.
Hilton Head Hospital will hold a clinic from 3 to 6 p.m.; Bluffton Early Childhood Center will hold a clinic staffed by Beaufort Memorial Hospital from 1 to 7 p.m.
Vaccines at these clinics are available only to district contractors and employees. Staff must sign up and, if they are school-based, ask permission from their administrator to leave their building for appointments before 4 p.m.
Vaccines are free and are not mandatory for district staff. Staff will receive the two-step Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, and the hospital will schedule them to receive their second dose three weeks after the first dose.
“It means a lot to teachers,” district superintendent Frank Rodriguez said Thursday. “Some are very concerned about safety, and others are less concerned but still want to be vaccinated. ... We want teachers to feel as safe and comfortable as possible.”
Similar clinics were held last week at Battery Creek High School and Hilton Head Hospital. About 400 staff were vaccinated at the high school, and about 200 staff were vaccinated at the hospital — that’s 20% of the district’s nearly 3,000 employees. Signups for both events were full in less than four hours.
Sarah Hayes, who is athletics director for Battery Creek High and got vaccinated there Thursday, said the district was “moving in the right direction.”
“In my position, I do have people coming around from all over,” Hayes said. “Charleston, Columbia — you never know who’s going to show up at your games. So that security of knowing that things are just a little bit safer now — I have some protection now.”
District staff also have access to reserved vaccination timeslots in Port Royal and Okatie, which were announced last week. Those shots began Monday, with new appointment slots opening every day, according to a Beaufort Memorial Hospital announcement.
Of BCSD’s nearly 3,000 employees, 1,700 in a recent survey said they wanted to get vaccinated once they were eligible. About 77% of the district’s staff responded to the survey.
The district saw a spike of COVID-19 cases and quarantines following winter break, when students returned to full-time, in-person classes for the first time since the beginning of the pandemic. At one point, more than 1,600 district students and staff were quarantining.
However, active COVID cases and quarantines have decreased significantly since January.
District spokesperson Candace Bruder said that between March 1 and March 14, six staff and 33 students have tested positive for COVID-19.
According to the district’s COVID-19 case dashboard, between 531 and 606 students and staff were quarantining from March 6 to March 12.