BALTIMORE — "I’m very fortunate," said Doris Moore.
Moore is one of more than 80 Cherry Hill Homes residents ages 65 years or older who got their first COVID-19 vaccine dose Tuesday.
"It wasn’t bad at all," said Gloria Harris.
The Housing Authority of Baltimore City partnered with the Baltimore City Health Department and MedStar Health, using their mobile clinic to break down any accessibility barriers.
"Many folks are being asked to go online to register and in many of our communities with the residents we serve, they don’t necessarily have access to an online platform or internet to be able to register," said Tracey Keyser, HABC’s Senior VP of Resident Services. "We consider them to be our most vulnerable and fragile population. We though the best option was to bring the option to them."
Keyser said they started this effort in Cherry Hill because it’s their largest and most vulnerable community, disproportionately impacted by COVID-19.
"We all know how our minority communities and our lower socio-economic communities are impacted. They’re just as impacted with social ills and COVID-19 as they are with access to resources so our job is to bridge that gap," said Keyser.
HABC staff went door-to-door last week to make sure all eligible seniors knew this was happening, and helped over 80 percent of them sign up," said Keyser.
"It was an overwhelming response," said Keyser.
"I wanted to get the shot to make sure I'll be okay. I don’t want to spread anything. And I’m getting older so hey that’s another reason," said Harris.
The city hopes to be able to do this in other areas but they are at the mercy of vaccine supply and demand.
"We know that there are other Baltimore city and statewide residents that need this as well and we know that resources are scarce so we really are just trying to partner where we can," said Keyser.
The mobile clinic will be back in a few weeks to administer second doses.
