BROOKINGS — Keeping folks healthy and preparing for a possible emergency — those were the twin goals of a Monday afternoon exercise held by the Brookings County Pandemic Planning & Coordination Committee. Volunteers administered free flu and pertussis vaccinations during the event at Brookings High School.

“The POD (point of dispensing) functions from the department of health,” Bunny Christie, infection preventionist at Brookings Health System, said. “In a real emergency — the federal government could declare a real emergency or the state could declare a real emergency — and then whatever you’re dispersing or distributing … if it’s medicine, if it’s supplies, if it’s something like that, then the federal government or the state would make sure to get those supplies to each of those county PODs.”

She said because the Brookings committee uses state grant money, they’re required to conduct a full-scale exercise like this every other year. 

“The full-scale exercise — the department of health does not tell you how to do it or what to use,” Christie said. “So we have done everything from popsicle sticks, we’ve done drive through PODs where we drive through and give them M&Ms and they have to take it like a pill, right? We’ve done everything from practice where we just talk about it and walk through ourselves. And then we’ve done things like this — where we ask for a certain amount of vaccine or something else, and then we’re able to distribute it that way and have an actual practice with real, live patients.”

The committee planned to distribute 500 free flu shots this year; but due to a statewide uptick in pertussis, the state health department asked them to distribute 1000 vaccines for that as well.

“There is whooping cough going on in all the different schools in South Dakota, so the department of health asked us if we could go ahead and give the Tdap (tetanus, diphtheria and pertussis) shot to help knock that down,” Bob Hill, Brookings County emergency manager, said. “Our exercise this year was the POD flu shot to give 500 vaccinations, and at the last minute the South Dakota Department of Health asked us if we could give them a hand. And of course, being good stewards of South Dakota tax dollars, we decided yes we could.”

He said this is exactly what the committee and its volunteers prepare for.

“We train for this kind of stuff, and we’ve been training for many years,” Hill said. “And it’s good to see our group of people — it’s not one individual, it’s a group of people — you got the medical staff, you’ve got the non-medical staff and you’ve got all the volunteers. We’ve got over 75 people here to run this.”

Christie said the team acquired a lot of experience during the pandemic years.

“When we had our COVID community vaccine clinics, we were doing sometimes days of 1400, 1600 vaccines at a time. This team has functioned together for so long,” she said. “We’ve all worn different colored vests before, to try out all the chief roles and that sort of thing. So things flow. It’s like cross-training, right? You know what’s happening — even if it’s not your area. And so the great thing is, all these people that are wearing the chief vests have done some form of full-scale exercise before, even it’s not in their exact roles today.”

They were also able to incorporate some training for SDSU students.

“We’re able to work with both SDSU pharmacy and nursing students,” Christie said. “They’ve already given vaccines before. But they have to have so many clinical hours, and so they’re able to come and participate. But it’s a different side of vaccines — it’s not being at a hospital, it’s not being at a pharmacy. They’re seeing public health in a different aspect by coming and volunteering their time. Plus, they’re able to use that as their clinical hours.”

She urged people who missed the event to check their vaccination statuses and look into getting shots if needed.

“What you can do to find out about any of your vaccines is, first thing check your patient portal,” Christie said. “Patient portals are essential to most health care agencies — Sanford, Avera, Brookings Health. Everybody has a patient portal around here … the majority of health care or any sort of health system will have a patient portal. If they don’t, you can go to the department of health website, and there is a vaccine information request that you can place. It is electronic, and it does take a few days to get that — but it will be mailed to you per the department of health.”

She advises people showing symptoms of pertussis to get tested.

“Unfortunately, pertussis is much like every other respiratory ailment that’s going around right now — so a lot of cold-like symptoms, sometimes flu-like symptoms, but definitely runny nose, coughing, sometimes that chest tightness … So what they should do then is get a mask on, make sure you’re covered, and then call ahead and make an appointment at urgent care or your primary care,” Christie said. “Pertussis is spread through droplets, and so coughing and those kinds of things will spread it. So we want to make sure that people are covering their cough, we want to make sure they’re covering their mouth, we want to make sure they’re performing good hand hygiene and respiratory etiquette.”

Contact Jay Roe at jroe@brookingsregister.com.