NAHANT — Visitors to Nahant Beach on Monday and Tuesday had a potentially surprising opportunity: a bus where they could get vaccinated against COVID-19.
The Massachusetts VaxBus, run by the state’s Department of Public Health, made a tour stop at the beach this week, offering the Johnson & Johnson and Pfizer vaccines to patients without appointments.
The Department of Public Health works with local community health organizations to determine where the bus stops. The agency is especially focused on the 20 communities across the state which have been hardest hit by the pandemic, a list which includes Lynn.
In some locations, Samantha White, a registered nurse from Pawtucket, R.I. who was administering vaccines on the bus on Tuesday, said they might only receive a handful of patients, while at others they see hundreds in one day, especially near the beginning of the vaccine rollout.
The city of Lynn requested that the bus be stationed at Nahant Beach.
White said that they hadn’t had many people take them up on the offer yet (on Monday, only four patients received vaccines), but she saw that as a positive sign.
“We don’t see as big a rush anymore, because the people who want it have it already,” White said. “It’s kind of a good thing we’re not as busy.”
The VaxBus tours the state, bringing vaccines to communities where residents have trouble accessing them otherwise. EMT Shawn Alger, of Fairhaven, Conn. said that in many places that he has gone on the bus, they have parked right in the middle of neighborhoods so as to be as close to members of the public as possible.
“People walk out of their house and say, ‘hey, I need to get vaccinated, and I saw you out my window,'” Alger said. “To have us in these small areas, it makes a difference. It’s people that don’t use mass transit.”
Alger said he has vaccinated someone who was under house arrest and unable to get to a clinic, people without transportation to the state’s mass vaccine sites and seniors unable to travel. He has also helped people who had their first dose of the Moderna vaccine sign up for appointments for their second dose the same day they come to the bus, since the VaxBus doesn’t offer that shot.
The VaxBus will circle back through the area in a few weeks to provide the second dose of the Pfizer vaccine, stopping again in Nahant on July 26 and 27. It will also stop at Revere Beach this Saturday and again on July 31.
A small group of protesters stood by the bus on Tuesday holding signs claiming the COVID vaccine is dangerous and untested. Alger and White said they weren’t deterred and hoped that potential vaccine recipients wouldn’t be either.
“For right now, we’re just doing what we can do,” White said. “If it’s one or 20 people, that’s still one more person vaccinated at the end of the day.”