Health

Town of Clinton working with UMass Memorial to get COVID-19 vaccine to seniors who can’t travel

BOSTON — From the Clinton Town Hall, several teams set out to deliver Moderna vaccines to seniors in Clinton who were unable to get to a mass vaccination site. The partnership involved UMass Memorial Medical Center and the Clinton Senior Center, along with fire & EMS personnel from Clinton.

Among the homes they visited to deliver the vaccine, the residence of Florence and Jack Leicht. Jack Leicht was an army paratrooper. For their daughter Ann Fleury, it’s a day she and her family have long been waiting for.

“This just makes my whole day, my whole week, my whole year,” Ann Fleury said.

Travel to a mass vaccination site like Gillette or Boston seemed daunting, so to be able to see her parents get the vaccine without having to risk travel was an amazing relief.

“We would have done whatever we can do to get it. [For] people with physical limitations – and they have some – it’s hard, it’s hard to go to some of these mass vaccinations sites,” Fleury said.

Staff from the senior center in Clinton has called every senior over 80 years old they could find to ask them if they wanted a vaccine. The town hall was set up as a vaccination site for those seniors in town who were able to travel.

UMass Memorial Medical Center is working in partnership with several towns in central Massachusetts to get the vaccines to those who are unable to get to large mass vaccination sites.

“If you look at where this pandemic started and where this pandemic will end, it’s in the populations that are elderly, in the populations and neighborhoods of color, and in neighborhoods that are under-resourced. If you don’t put out the fire there, it will just restart,” said Dr. Eric Dr. Eric Dickson, the president & CEO of UMass Memorial Health Care

For the fire chief in Clinton, Chief Michael Lutes, it’s a special day.

“We’re looking to be part of the solution, and the solution is right here, the vaccinations. So giving to these people means more to me than anything; my mother’s here, a lot of my relatives are here and a lot of my people that go back many years are here today,” Chief Lutes said.

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