HONOLULU (KHON2) — Residents and employees at the Kalaupapa Settlement of Kalawao County on Molokai received their first round of COVID-19 vaccines this week.
Dr. Glenn Wasserman, Chief of the Communicable Disease and Public Health Nursing Division of the Hawaii Department of Health, and two DOH public health nurses flew to Kalaupapa Airport on Monday to deliver and administer the vaccines.
“It is gratifying to be able to protect our Kalaupapa patients and community with these vaccinations. Our patients are elderly with significant comorbidities that make them especially vulnerable to COVID-19,” Dr. Wasserman said in a news release. “We’ll be back in four weeks to administer a second dose of the Moderna vaccine to those who have now received their initial inoculations.”
Kalawao County registered its first case of COVID-19 in early December, which was contained without community transmission. Kalawao was reported to be the last county within the U.S. to have no reported cases of COVID-19.
