Prior to the conclusion of Monday’s Brownwood City Council meeting, City Manager Emily Crawford addressed the impending arrival of COVID-19 vaccinations to Brown County and how the distribution will be handled.

Crawford said the City is working on understanding our goal as a local health authority in regard to facts and distribution.

Crawford stated “Because these will be shipped in mass quantities it’s possible that we will have to distribute the vaccines to providers, but we’re still trying to get clarification on that. We could have a sizable role in that, and because of that (Brownwood Fire) Chief (Eric) Hicks has suggested we try to get some input from the county on how many people are planning on electing to take the vaccine and we will need to know how many vials that we would need for county purposes. We certainly don’t want too many because it just expires.”

The city is working on a survey to go out, and mostly likely it will be digital, to the entire county.  “We’re just trying to find out how many people want it for the purpose of planning for vaccine distribution. Our intent isn’t to try and force someone to take a vaccine, we’re just trying to know how many vaccines we actually need in Brown County to distribute.”

Crawford further added, “If 10,000 or 15,000 or more plan to take the vaccine, we need to have a plan with our providers and our health department on how we’re going to give that in short period of time.”