Fifty senior citizens at the Hostmark Cove Apartments were recipients of COVID-19 vaccines due in part to the city’s effort to get everyone vaccinated.

The city of Poulsbo is joining Kitsap County in its mass vaccination effort by partnering with the Kitsap Public Health District, Department of Emergency Managment, Poulsbo Fire Department, and local pharmacies such as Safeway to host pop-up vaccination sites.

“The city of Poulbso has been really impressed with what county public health has been doing with mass vaccinations, but we realized that there’s a lot of people in our community that can’t go to mass vaccination sites because of mobility issues or just trying to sign up to get a vaccination,” said Kim Hendrickson, director of Poulsbo’s Housing, Health and Human Services Committee.

Hendrickson was tasked by Poulsbo Mayor Becky Erickson with creating a mass vaccination effort in Poulsbo, with a focus on vaccinating people who would otherwise have trouble getting vaccinated, such as senior citizens and others with mobility issues.

“Through her leadership, we’ve been able to partner with” the Medical Reserve Corp and “just a whole lot of volunteers to work togehter to figure out how to bring these vaccines to the community,” Hendrickson said.

In this case, the Safeway pharmacy in Poulsbo set aside about 50 COVID vaccines to be used on seniors at the Hostmark Cove Apartments.

Hendrickson hopes more pop-up vaccination locations will be coming soon.

“This is the first of what I hope to be many pop-up vaccination events in Poulsbo. What we do depends entirely on how many vaccines we can get from local pharmacists and providers,” Hendrickson said.

Following the vaccination guidelines given by the state and Gov. Jay Inslee, the city will place priority on vaccinating seniors with mobility issues preventing them from traveling to other mass vacination sites within the county.

“We have a list of places we would like to go, but are welcoming suggestions from the public on places where there might be a large amount of seniors or other people eligible for the vaccine that have trouble getting to the other vaccination sites,” Hendrickson said.