Cape Cod Regional Vaccine Consortium

1. What is the Cape Cod COVID-19 Vaccine Consortium?

Cape Cod COVID-19 Vaccine Consortium, comprised of Cape Cod Healthcare (CCHC), Barnstable County (BC), Cape Cod Delegation, the towns and community health centers of Cape Cod, with support from Cape Cod Community College (4Cs), have established a large-scale vaccination site at the Cape Cod Community College gymnasium. Cape Cod Healthcare and Barnstable County Department of Health and Environment will operate the vaccination site as of March 1. It will have the capacity to administer more than 750 vaccines per day, five days per week, pending supply from the state.  

2. How are Barnstable County and Cape Cod Healthcare working together at the same location to provide vaccines?

Barnstable County and Cape Cod Healthcare will share the site and schedule residents independently from one another.

3. How will eligible residents make an appointment for a Barnstable County Clinic at Cape Cod Community College?

Barnstable County's clinics at Cape Cod Community College will be set up just like any of the regional clinics that Barnstable County holds for eligible residents. Clinics will be announced 24 hours in advance, and appointments will be made using the state's scheduling platform, PrepMod.

4. How will eligible residents make an appointment through Cape Cod Healthcare at Cape Cod Community College?

At this time, Cape Cod Healthcare will not be offering appointments to the public. Cape Cod Healthcare will be contacting (by phone) the most vulnerable population of older residents identified by the local Boards of Health. These residents do not need to be patients of Cape Cod Healthcare. 

5. What is the criteria used for tracking the most vulnerable residents on Cape Cod?

With support from councils on aging, police, fire, and other departments in their respective towns, local boards of health are working to identify the most vulnerable older adults in each of their individual municipal boundaries. Elder Services of Cape Cod (the region's ASAP) is also being consulted to cross-reference and reach all vulnerable older adults. 

Boards of health within each town will identify vulnerable older adults by town via the below plan to efficiently administer the vaccine to older adults left behind by the current vaccine offerings. Vulnerable older adults will be identified into two tracks:

1. Track One: Individuals who need assistance making a vaccination appointment but are able to travel to Cape Cod Community College. Track One individuals include thosewho are medically vulnerable and/or with limited computer abilities or access.

a. This list will be provided to Cape Cod Healthcare, who will proactively reach out to and schedule these appointments at the Cape Cod Community College site. 

2. Track Two: Individuals who are homebound, who do not drive, reside in senior housing, have other confining/limiting factors, etc.

a. This list will be provided to Catchment Area Leads (Outer Cape Health Services; Community Health Center of Cape Cod; Town of Barnstable), who will proactively reach out to and schedule appointments at community health centers, home visits, regional sites, or another location.  Homebound is defined as Residents of Barnstable County that have functional impairments that prevent them from leaving their homes. This population generally includes older people with lower-than-average income levels and serious medical problems like dementia, advanced heart conditions, or arthritis. Pertaining to COVID-19, this elder residential demographic is designated as homebound due to these medical challenges/disabilities.  

6. Is Cape Cod Healthcare receiving vaccine from the state? How much? Which vaccine? 

Yes, in the last week of February, Cape Cod Hospital was added to the state's list of approved hospitals to receive and administer the COVID-19 vaccine. They are receiving a total of 2,000 doses per week. Cape Cod Healthcare administered 2,000 first doses at the Cape Cod Melody Tent during the week of 2/22 and another 2,000 doses during the week of 3/1, in addition to 2,000-second doses. Cape Cod Healthcare is currently receiving Moderna; This may change.

7. How much and which vaccine is Barnstable County receiving from the state?

The County is receiving 1,070 doses per week. The County is currently receiving the Pfizer and Johnson and Johnson vaccine, and this may change.

8. Will Barnstable County continue to also operate regional sites across Cape Cod in addition to operating clinics at Cape Cod Community College?

Yes, Barnstable County plans to continue operating regional vaccination sites in Eastham, Falmouth, Orleans, and Truro.

9. What are the upcoming Barnstable County clinics?

Barnstable County Department of Health and Environment will be vaccinations on

• Tuesday 3/9 and Thursday 3/11 from 10:00 AM-3:00 PM at Cape Cod Community College(single dose clinic – Johnson and Johnson vaccine)
• Wednesday, 3/10 from 9:00 AM - 4:00 PM at the Orleans DPW (2^nd dose only – Pfizer vaccine)
• Friday, 3/12 from 10:00 AM-2:00 PM at the Orleans Council on Aging (2^nd dose only –Pfizer vaccine)

*Please note that Barnstable County’s vaccine schedule is developed week to week. 

10. What plans are being made to provide vaccines to our region's homebound?  

The Consortium is working with the COVID-19 Command Center & DPH to request additional vaccine supplies for homebound residents (~2,500 residents have been identified as homebound.) 

* Homebound is defined as Residents of Barnstable County that have functional impairments that prevent them from leaving their homes. This population generally includes older people with lower-than-average income levels and serious medical problems like dementia, advanced heart conditions, or arthritis. Pertaining to COVID-19, this elder residential demographic is designated as homebound due to these medical challenges/disabilities.  

11. How does the County ensure that first-dose people will not get an appointment at a second-dose clinic?

Barnstable County Department of Health and Environment screens and removes anyone who registers for their first dose at a second-dose clinic to ensure there is enough vaccine for the people who need a second dose. 

This information is provided by the Barnstable County Department of Health and Environment.  

Open Position: Assistant Operations Manager, Captains Golf Course

Brewster seeks qualified candidates for Assistant Operations Manager for the Captains Golf Course. Position performs administrative and supervisory work to assist the Director of Golf Operations in the management of two town owned 18 hole golf courses. Duties include, but are not limited to; supervises driving range, course pace of play, oversees maintenance of pull and motor golf carts; oversee and manage world handicap system; supervises tournaments and games, including scheduling, posting information and rules, recording scores, and determining winners; submits bi-weekly payroll for staff; recruit, hire, train and supervise seasonal staff, assign personnel to responsibilities and supervises scheduling; runs golf clinics and provides individual lessons as requested; maintain effective public relations. Bachelor’s degree in related field with a minimum of 3 years of work experience in golf course operations, or any equivalent combination of education, training and experience. Membership in PGA preferred. Full-time, Grade II Personnel Bylaw position, annual starting salary range $60,000 - $70,000. Please submit a cover letter, resume, and Town employment application to Susan Broderick, employment@brewster-ma.gov. Deadline 4pm on 3/12/21. Full job description, click here. EEO/AA

March 30th, 2021 Nauset High School Project and Debt Exclusion Elections – Information on Voting by Mail

Vote-by-mail postcard applications have now been sent to all registered Brewster voters.  Please click here if you have not received an application.  These applications only need to be returned if voters want to vote-by-mail for the upcoming elections to be held in Brewster.  Please mark which elections you would like to participate in by mail and remember to sign the postcard.  The Town Clerk’s Office cannot mail a ballot without having a signed application on file.  The postcard may be mailed or hand delivered to the drop box outside of the front door at Town Hall.  As soon as the ballots are printed, the Town Clerk’s Office will begin mailing them to everyone who submitted a signed vote-by-mail ballot application.

Voters who have requested to vote-by-mail in both elections (the district and the town) which will be held on March 30th will receive 2 ballots, 2 ballot envelopes, 2 sets of instructions, and 2 ballot return envelopes as follows:

• Nauset Regional District Election ballot will be canary (yellow) with a corresponding yellow labeled ballot envelope.  Approval of this ballot question would grant authority to expand and renovate the Nauset Regional High School.

• Town of Brewster Special Election ballot will be cherry (pink) with a corresponding pink labeled ballot envelope.  Approval of this ballot question would provide funding for the Nauset Regional High School project through a temporary property tax increase, referred to as a debt exclusion, to fund the Town’s share of debt service costs for the project if it is approved.

The ballots may returned in the same outer envelope but each must be in their own, signed inner ballot envelope.  It is very important that there is only 1 ballot returned in a ballot envelope and that it corresponds with the correct election.  Please remember to sign the ballot envelope as the ballot cannot be cast without a signature.  Ballots may be returned by mail or hand delivered to the drop box outside of the front door at Town Hall.  Ballots must be returned by the close of polls on March 30th.

Polls will be open to in-person voting on March 30th, 2021 from 11am until 7pm at Brewster Baptist Church Hall, 1848 Main Street.

Barnstable County Vaccine Update – 2/24/21

We wanted to reach out with a few updates and reminders regarding COVID-19 vaccine distribution on Cape Cod:

• Vaccine availability on Cape Cod remains limited. Barnstable County is in constant communication with the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, relaying the vital need for more vaccines to distribute locally. This need is especially great for our senior citizens. As the situation progresses, we ask that if you can travel off-Cape to a mass vaccination site, please get an appointment at one of those six locations. We realize that going off-Cape is inconvenient and challenging, but it's essential to leave the few local appointments for those who are less able/mobile. The mass vaccination sites are Gillette Stadium, Fenway Park, the DoubleTree in Danvers, the Eastfield Mall in Springfield, the Natick Mall, and the former Circuit City in Dartmouth. Availability is updated every Thursday.

• We are currently prioritizing second-dose vaccine clinics and we will notify you when we have scheduled the next first-dose clinic. Please be patient and remember that we are receiving a small amount of vaccine locally. We have to take care of second doses before we can provide more first doses. 

• 24-hour notifications will resume as soon first-dose clinics are scheduled. We will send an email notification 24 hours before registration opens for all first dose clinics so that you can plan accordingly.

• If you are waiting to receive an email regarding your second dose of vaccine: it can take UP TO TWO WEEKS (14 DAYS) for the email inviting you to sign up for your second dose to be sent. You should also be checking your junk mail/spam folders regularly. If MORE than 14 days have passed and you still have not received an email, please call our COVID-19 Helpline at (774) 330-3001. IMPORTANT! Never share your second dose email with ANYONE. Doing so will adversely affect the ability of those who received their first dose through one of our clinics to successfully sign up for their second dose. Further, anyone who did not receive the first dose at one of our clinics will be turned away.

Thank you for your continued patience during this challenging time.
 

Spring 2021 Town Meeting and Annual Town Election Dates Set

At the February 8th, 2021 Select Board meeting, the Board voted to move Brewster’s Annual/Special Town Meeting to Saturday May 15th, 2021.  Consistent with Town bylaws, the Annual Town Election will now be held on Tuesday May 25th.  Nomination papers are now due by Tuesday April 6th.  Please see the revised election calendar for all of the new dates which apply to the May 25th, 2021 Annual Town Election.

Cape Cod Commission continues COVID-19 Recovery and Resiliency Workshop Series

Industry-specific education and information to help local businesses recover from the pandemic

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE (February 23, 2021) – The Cape Cod Commission is pleased to announce the first round of industry-specific webinars in its COVID-19 Recovery and Resiliency Workshop Series, an initiative designed to assist Cape Cod business owners in navigating the economic impacts of the pandemic. 

Through the series, business owners will learn about recovery-related topics and will have an opportunity to provide feedback on key challenges they are facing, which will help to develop economic resilience toolkits for the community.  

The first round of industry-specific virtual workshops will introduce the Commission's broader business recovery and resiliency efforts and provide real examples of business resiliency and continuity to help local businesses identify effective pandemic-responsive strategies including digital marketing, eCommerce, and collaboration/networking practices. The series schedule is as follows: 

• March 1, 2021 at 3:00 pm: Business Resilience Workshop for Food Service and Restaurant Businesses  
• March 2, 2021 at 3:00 pm: Business Resilience Workshop for Accommodations Businesses
• March 3, 2021 at 6:00 pm: Business Resilience Workshop for Retail and Product-based Businesses
• March 4, 2021 at 3:00 pm: Business Resilience Workshop for Arts, Culture, and Recreation Businesses
• March 8, 2021 at 3:00 pm: Business Resilience Workshop for Service-based Businesses

These industry-specific workshops will build on the first installment in the series held on February 18 2021 that focused on the current round of the Paycheck Protection Program and other pandemic-relief funding opportunities.   

This workshop series is funded by an Economic Development Assistance CARES Act grant. The Cape Cod Commission is working with Boston-based consultant Revby to facilitate the workshops, develop the economic resiliency toolkits, and identify further strategies for local economic recovery. 

All interested Cape Cod business owners are invited to attend this free workshop series, but space is limited, and registration is required. Business owners unable to attend their own industry's workshop are encouraged to participate in a different workshop that fits their schedule. For more information and to register, please visit cccom.link/business-recovery. 

Saint Patrick’s Day Curbside Event on March 17th

ALL Brewster residents are invited to a curbside Food Distribution event from 11:00 am to 1:00 pm at the Brewster Council on Aging, 1673 Main Street, in the back parking lot. Through the coordination of Mark Martino, a volunteer driver for the COA, the COA received 53 bags of varied food collected in the Millstone Village neighborhood. In case of inclement weather, this event will be held on Thursday, March 18, at the same time.   

Brewster Select Board and Town Administrator Join Cape Officials Urging State to Allocate More COVID-19 Vaccine to Barnstable County

February 12, 2021

The Honorable Charlie Baker
Governor of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts
Massachusetts State House, Room 360
Boston, MA 02133

Dear Governor Baker,

We write with urgency and alarm regarding the inadequate supply of COVID-19 vaccine allocated to municipalities within Barnstable County. As elected and appointed officials at the state, municipal, and county level, we can tell you that the situation on the ground is untenable and must change.

Cape Cod may be Massachusetts’ most distinctive peninsula, but it is also the oldest county by age in the Commonwealth and the oldest county in New England. According to the 2019 American Community Survey data for Barnstable County, 13% of our population is aged 75 and older (27,666 residents), and nearly 17% is aged 65 to 74 (35,915 residents) – percentages more than twice that of the rest of the state. Since you extended vaccination into Phase 2, our shared constituents over the age of 75 have had to navigate a vaccination registration process where the fittest and most tech savvy get access to a vaccine and those more vulnerable are left out. A difficult to decipher website and a well-intentioned but overburdened 2-1-1 call system may work when vaccines are available in your community, but when the burden of scheduling a vaccination includes having to find transportation to a site over an hour's drive away, it becomes an immense hardship.

Demand for the vaccine and reliable information about accessing the vaccine on Cape Cod is very high. A hotline established by Barnstable County has received over 22,000 calls since its inception on January 19^th. On February 3, the Cape Cod COVID-19 Response Task Force hosted a tele-town hall, where over 13,000 unique dials stayed on an hour-long call. Each of us have received hundreds of emails and calls with urgent pleas for help from constituents who cannot drive to Gillette Stadium or Dartmouth, who do not have access to internet or a computer, and/or who do not have friends and family nearby who are able to help arrange an appointment or help with transportation.

To date, approximately 22,000 doses of vaccine have been provided to Barnstable County, Cape Cod Healthcare, community health centers, and two municipalities. While 11.7% of Barnstable County residents have received the first dose of the vaccination, we worry this does not capture how many more adults over 75 there are in our communities. We will need 55,000 doses to vaccinate all Cape Codders aged 75 and older, assuming use of Moderna and Pfizer vaccines. This is a steep challenge, especially given the Commonwealth’s focus on an off-Cape mass vaccination program.

We urgently request your swift action on the following:

• Establish a mass vaccination site at Cape Cod Community College, as discussed but never executed by your Administration. We are disappointed in your decision to forgo a state funded mass vaccination site on Cape Cod and urge reconsideration.
• An increased allocation of vaccine to Barnstable County. The County has executed regional vaccine clinics in Eastham, Falmouth, Hyannis, and Orleans to date, with plans for a site in Truro in two weeks. However the County is only receiving 975 doses a week, although it is currently the only provider of large scale vaccination in the region. To execute these vaccination sites in a predictable way, the County needs a consistent and predictable supply of vaccine.
• Delivery of vaccine to a consortium of local boards of health in Barnstable County. Local boards of health have coordinated with Councils on Aging, police, fire, and other departments in their respective towns to identify the most vulnerable older adults, and are doing so across town boundaries. Municipalities are working with Cape Cod Healthcare, community health centers, and Barnstable County to execute a plan to reach homebound and vulnerable older adults who are not able to access the current vaccine scheme. This consortium is prepared to vaccinate our most vulnerable residents, but we need vaccine to do so.

In the most significant vaccination effort in Massachusetts history, Cape Codders are being left behind. We have worked deliberately and collaboratively as a region to plan to provide vaccination to our residents. We simply need the state to allocate vaccine equitably based on demography. Please help us help ourselves.

Respectfully,
 

COVID Testing Resources

Anyone experiencing symptoms (fever, cough, headache, loss of taste or smell, or shortness of breath) or has been within 6’ of a confirmed positive COVID individual for at least 15 minutes, should be tested to help prevent the spread of COVID-19.  Please see the latest information from the US Food & Drug Administration on coronavirus testing.   Numerous test centers are now available across the Cape.

Mid/Lower Cape Locations: 

• Carewell Urgent Care Center, Dennis www.carewellurgentcare.com  
• Coastal Medical Transport. Services, Yarmouth www.cmtsma.com
• CVS Pharmacy, Harwich& Yarmouth www.cvs.com
• Outer Cape Health Services, Harwich www.outercape.org
• Nauset Testing, Brewster www.nausetcovidtesting.com

For a complete listing (downloadable) of locations on Cape Cod, please click here. Note that this is for informational purposes only and does not represent an endorsement or approval by the Town of Brewster.

Barnstable County Department of Health and Environment Announces Upcoming Vaccine Clinic

Drive-Thru Clinic in Orleans on Wednesday, February 17 will be open for registration on Friday, February 12 by 12:00 PM

February 11, 2021 – Barnstable, MA. | The Barnstable County Department of Health and Environment announced today that on Friday, February 12, 2021 by 12:00 PM, the following vaccine clinic will be posted, and will be searchable and OPEN FOR APPOINTMENTS at www.maimmunizations.org

Orleans Department of Public Works

COVID 19 Vaccine Clinic Date:Wednesday, February 17, 2021
Address: 40 Giddiah Hill Road, Orleans, MA 02653
Number of doses available on February 17: 800
Time: 9:00 AM - 4:00 PM
Directions: see Google Maps

This clinic is available for those who live or work on Cape Cod and meet the criteria for Phase One or who are 75 years or older. Caregiverswho accompany someone age 75 or older registered for this clinic may also register and receive their own vaccination on the same day.

Please arrive no more than 15 minutes prior to your scheduled appointment.

Registration Tip:When going to www.maimmunizations.org, manually scroll down until you see this clinic listed. We advise that you do not type in the date or any other parameters in the search.

Instructions to Help Companions Accompanying Person 75 + Who is Registered for the Barnstable County Regional Covid-19 Vaccine Clinic in Orleans on 2/17

• Caregivers can register to receive a vaccine if accompanying an individual aged 75 or older registered for the Orleans DPW Clinic to be held on February 17.  
• It has come to our attention that companions may have trouble registering using the state system. Here is what you need to do: when completing registration as a companion, please check the “75+” box which will allow you to continue with the registration process.  All parties must have an appointment, with no exceptions.
• Please remember that Barnstable County has a limited supply of the vaccine. We ask that if you can drive to a Massachusetts mass vaccination site off Cape with the 75 + senior you are accompanying, please do so.
• Please note that we will be reevaluating this procedure for future clinics.

Press Contact: Sonja Sheasley, Communications Manager | (508) 375-6896 | Sonja.sheasley@barnstablecounty.org