Webster County Health Department
Leading the way: WCHD heads COVID fight; Holds several vaccination clinics to combat virus
When a scary new disease called COVID-19 made its way from China to the United States, and eventually to Iowa, the Webster County Health Department found itself in the forefront of the local effort to fight it.
Staff members worked seven days a week, providing information and conducting contact tracing needed to slow the spread of the virus.
And when a vaccine became available, the Health Department vaccinated thousands of people in a program that gained statewide attention.
“As I look back, the staff held each other together,” said Kari Prescott, the department’s director. “We cried, yelled, laughed, whatever it took to get us through the day.”
“The staff really looked out for one another,” she added. “We surveyed the staff weekly. We talked about mental health, anxiety, anger, especially for our staff members who were answering the telephones.”
Jamie Saxton, an intake coordinator who did a lot of contact tracing during the pandemic, has worked for the Health Department for 20 years, and during that time she has worked through some previous disease outbreaks.
“I worked through H1N1, and answered countless phone calls from concerned people,” Saxton said. “That was nothing like 2020. I remember being on conference calls months prior to COVID making it to the United States and hoping it wouldn’t get as bad here because we have good medical and emergency response.”
The Health Department began planning a response to the disease in February 2020. The department worked with UnityPoint Health — Fort Dodge, the city and county governments, the Fort Dodge Fire Department, law enforcement agencies, Webster County Emergency Management and the state Department of Public Health.
The planning was put into action on March 17, 2020, when Gov. Kim Reynolds issued a public health proclamation.
“I called a mandatory staff meeting to inform staff what this meant for our department and tried to explain what everyone should expect,” Prescott said. “I knew that this was going to be long term. Life changed that day for the Webster County Health Department. We have pandemic plans; we’ve talked through the pandemic processes and done trainings, but this was our reality.”
The challenge grew in late 2020, beginning about September, when the county experienced unprecedented high numbers of cases.
Webster County is now experiencing another big surge in COVID-19 cases, likely fueled by the fast-spreading omicron variant.
In December 2020, the first bit of good news in the fight against COVID-19 arrived when the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved some vaccines for emergency use.
Sadie Trueblood, a program coordinator for the department, said that years of conducting drive-thru flu shot clinics gave the department lots of experience with mass distribution of vaccines.
“Our plans were tailored to allow us to administer the most vaccine in the shortest period of time,” she said. “We were very fortunate to have a location like the Crossroads Mall that allowed us to administer vaccinations in a climate-controlled easily accessible environment.”