The numbers of cases are dropping, masks are not required in school anymore and the vaccine is now being offered to the younger generations. Everything seems to be looking up for the first time in over a year.

With the hustle and bustle at the end of the year, a lot of students don’t have the time to go get the newly offered vaccine. Park County Public Health gave Powell High School an offer to hold a vaccine clinic for any students over the age of sixteen that were interested in receiving the vaccine. This provides a chance for students to get the vaccine at school without the hassle of going to the doctor’s office. 

“I think that it gives students an opportunity,” Principal Mr. Timothy Wormald said. “One thing that we know is students spend a lot of their day and time at school, especially if they’re in extracurricular activities… Some students don’t have a lot of opportunities during the school week to do something like this, so it’s really a convenience if they were interested in being vaccinated.”

Since it is close to the end of the year, the timing of the clinic was critical in order to fit in the time to give the students and staff that participated their second dose. 

“We had to do that [clinic] with a pretty quick turnaround because you have to have the shots about three weeks apart,” Mr. Wormald said. “We were able to get those students that had signed up and get them that first shot the other night and then they’ll have to do that again coming up here in a few weeks [May 18].”

After researching and having conversions with both her parents and medical professionals, senior Anna Atkinson was one of the students who decided to take full advantage of this clinic.

“I am not concerned about any of the effects of the vaccine, realistically only time will tell if there are going to be any long-term effects,” Atkinson said. “But we’re living in 2021, we are advanced enough in our technologies and science to be able to trust something when scientists say that it is going to be effective.”

Another student who chose to get the vaccine was sophomore Kalin Hicswa, who sees the vaccine as a way to possibly return to the way things used to be before the pandemic.

“I got the vaccine because it’s been extensively tested, and I want to do my part to protect myself and others from the virus as it adapts and evolves,” Hicswa said. “The benefits of potentially having everything back to normal far outweigh any foreseeable risks.”

At the clinic, roughly thirty students and staff were vaccinated. One major component of the effectiveness of the COVID-19 vaccines, especially Pfizer, is the temperature. According to the CDC, before mixing the vaccine with sodium chloride it must be stored in a temperature of 36-46 degrees Fahrenheit, and then it can stay at room temperature for up to two hours before being wasted.

“I think the clinic went well,” Mr. Wormald said. “All the students who signed up showed up [and] we didn’t waste any shots. They brought a certain number of those shots over and all those shots were administered, so that’s success in my mind.”