Two vaccination clinics open in the Northland to help get children 5-11 vaccinated

St. Louis County Public Health has now added vaccination clinics at the Eveleth Auditorium in Eveleth and at the First United Methodist Church in Duluth that will be open on Saturdays. Both opening with enough vaccines for the 5-11 age range.

This is the first wave of clinics in effort to get more children vaccinated. Something that most children ages 5-11 are actually looking forward to. Nurse Emily Lian says, “[The fact] that they kind of know already what’s going on, and what COVID is, and how they are playing a role in it is a really interesting thing to see in them."

Saturday morning the clinic in Duluth saw around 200 hundred patients signed up, a majority of them kids. Which meant nurses were doing their best to make the place feel as inviting as possible. Lian says, "kids are not the biggest fans of needles typically, so really being able to provide that safe space for a kid to feel like they have a little bit of say in what’s going on too."

And for some kids getting the vaccine was super easy. Like for Hope, who had been waiting for the shot for a while. She says, "It was really easy because all you got to do is just look away. You just got to look away. Look the other way.”

Nurses are finding that more and more kids have excitement when it comes to COVID compared to other shots in the past. "We’ve had a lot of kids who have been super excited actually which is fun”, says Emily.

The clinics have all three brands of vaccines and can do first dose, second dose, booster, and pediatric shots. Both you and your child could get signed up to get vaccinated here.

St. Louis County Public Health is planning on expanding the number of clinics for 5-11 year olds and when those locations are announced they will also be included on their website.