North Dakota COVID-19 vaccination committee meets publicly for first time - Bismarck Tribune

Molly Howell, immunization program manager for the North Dakota Department of Health, is shown during one of Gov. Doug Burgum's public coronavirus briefings.

Tom Stromme

A committee devising a plan for COVID-19 vaccinations in North Dakota met publicly for the first time Wednesday, discussing various scenarios regarding the distribution of a future coronavirus vaccine.

Three meetings of the vaccination planning committee and an unknown number of subcommittee meetings were held in September without public notice, which North Dakota Newspaper Association attorney Jack McDonald contends violated the state's open meetings law.

The Wednesday meeting was the first of which the public was notified via the secretary of state’s public notices website. The Tribune requested and received minutes of the previous meetings.

Committee Facilitator Molly Howell, the state Department of Health's immunization program manager, told the group at the beginning of Wednesday's meeting that the public and media outlets might be listening in, but “I don’t want that to deter your participation in the planning process.”

“I want to start off with mentioning, due to the high number of external stakeholders that we’ve started including in our COVID vaccination planning process, we’ve determined after consulting legal counsel that the COVID vaccination planning committee meeting should be an open meeting,” Howell said. “We do feel like this should be a transparent process so the public feels comfortable.”

McDonald doesn't believe the state Department of Health meant to deceive the public, but he said it was a violation of state law that allows the public the right to know how government functions are performed and how public funds are spent.

“I don’t think it was a deliberate means to sneak a committee by, I just think it fell through the cracks,” McDonald told the Tribune. “For one thing, they’re tremendously busy right now with (COVID-19). And there’s been a lot of turnover, and when you do that, things get disrupted.”

The fact that some state employees are working from home might also have interrupted typical work processes and played a role in the absence of proper meeting notifications, McDonald said.

The group’s purpose is to prepare for a future vaccine and submit a plan for COVID-19 vaccination distribution by Oct. 16 to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Howell said during an interview.

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Every state is required to submit a plan by that date, “but even if we didn’t have to submit a plan, we want to have a plan for when COVID-19 vaccine is eventually available,” she said.

The committee receives no funding and all involved are serving on a volunteer basis, she said.

Dozens of people from a wide range of groups are on the committee, including representatives from the areas of pharmacy, long-term care, rural health, hospitals, emergency services, tribes, along with state health, emergency services and human services staff, Howell said. More than 120 people, including Vern Dosch, the state's contact tracing administrator, and Dr. Paul Carson, an infectious disease researcher and doctor in Fargo, are on the committee, according to documents requested by the Tribune.

The group has discussed many aspects relating to a potential new vaccine, including storage and handling, distribution, equitable allocation and data collection on doses administered. All of those areas were covered at the virtual meeting Wednesday as participants worked through hypothetical scenarios surrounding a COVID-19 vaccine during a two-hour tabletop exercise led by Dr. Stephen Pickard, an adviser with the health department.

The potential scenarios discussed at Wednesday’s meeting were aimed at helping officials identify possible gaps in the state’s draft COVID-19 Mass Immunization Plan, according to a slideshow presentation during the virtual meeting. The Tribune requested the draft plan from the state’s Joint Information Center but did not immediately receive it.

Health care providers will be invited to sign up later this week for the state’s eventual vaccine allocation program, Howell said during the meeting.

The CDC has told health officials across the country to anticipate three phases of distribution of a COVID-19 vaccine. A vaccine has not yet been approved by the federal Food and Drug Administration, but six potential vaccines are undergoing clinical trials, according to the committee's meeting minutes from Sept. 16.

Officials should plan for a limited supply of doses to be administered to the highest-priority groups first, according to the CDC. In Phase Two, it is anticipated that there will be high interest from the public to get vaccinated and a large number of doses will be available. In Phase Three, public interest is expected to wane among some groups, even though there likely will be more than enough doses to go around.

Prioritization for who should receive a vaccine during the first phase has not yet been decided by the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, but early plans include placing critical health care workers at the top of the list.

Information from the state about a COVID-19 vaccine can be found at www.health.nd.gov/covid-19-vaccine-information.

Reach Bilal Suleiman at 701-250-8261 or Bilal.Suleiman@bismarcktribune.com

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