Alaska Medical Team Delivers COVID Vaccines via Snowmobile [Video]

• An Alaska medical team braves the elements to distribute COVID-19 vaccines to remote areas and elderly or immobile citizens.
• The all-women team of four travels by plane and rides a sled dragged by a snowmobile to distribute the vaccines.
• They shared that they were simply willing to do what they can to help.

A brave all-women team of medical workers in Alaska is going above and beyond to deliver COVID-19 vaccines to residents in the rural northern areas and elderly citizens who may struggle to reach vaccine sites.

Health care worker Meredith Dean told Good Morning America, “It’s challenging getting the vaccine up here to begin with and then getting it out to the villages brings on a whole new set of challenges and logistical issues. Time is of the utmost importance.”

Dr. Katrine Bengaard, pharmacist Heather Dean, nurse James Austin V, and nurse Heather Kenison, travel by plane and brave freezing temperatures as they ride in a sled dragged by a snowmobile.

To make sure that the vaccine wouldn’t freeze, Kenison had to wrap it in a protective package and keep it under her coat during the ride.

Bengaard shared, “We did the best we could, we had to kind of come up with it in the moment.”

James Austin V shares their itinerary: “We got to go from car to commercial airline, got picked up in a Sno-Go with a sled behind it, then we got on charter air, then we got picked up by a four-wheeler with a little trailer behind it, more Sno-Go, more sled.”

She added that despite the freezing temperatures, winter actually makes it easier to travel and navigate since “all the water turns to navigable ice.”

Bengaard shared that they were all simply “willing to do what we needed to do,” and ended up having “a really good time together.”

Dean added, “It’s just such an incredible opportunity to work with them. It was definitely an impactful and powerful moment to realize that we’ve all braved quite a bit to get there and provide care.”

One of the team’s vaccine recipients was a 92-year-old elder. Her parents had experienced the 1918 Spanish flu that decimated native Alaskans.

Bengaard shared, “It was very important for her family that she be vaccinated so that she be given a better chance for this pandemic. The 1918 flu was really devastating to some of the communities up here and it was just wonderful to be able to offer that to her.”

Distributing medicine across Alaska has always been challenging. A famous incident was in 1925 during the diphtheria epidemic. Twenty teams of sled dogs braved terrible weather across 674 miles in six days to deliver a life-saving anti-toxin. Several stories and movies were written about their heroics, especially about sled dog Balto.

Source: Tank’s Good News