Marshall County Public Health Nurse Lisa Letsinger asked the Marshall County Council members Monday morning for permission to apply for a few different grants.
Letsinger explained that the county received a grant without an application that was divided among all counties in the state based on population. She said over the course of 3.5 years the county will receive $223,792.
Letsinger commented, “This grant is for childhood immunizations, COVID-19 immunizations and also the scope of work added to do some compliance visits to all places in the county that administer routine vaccines just to make sure that they are following state guidelines, CDC guidelines and reporting guidelines.”
The next grant Letsinger presented was a grant that she applied for and received in 2020, but the special projects that would benefit from the grant could not occur as the COVID-19 pandemic took hold. She noted that the grant was renewed for about $60,600 to proceed with the administration of childhood vaccines and the costs of supplies, equipment, services and contractual work.
The third grant will allow the county to be awarded money for billing of administrative costs for the administration of COVID-19 vaccines.
“Every county, based on what we have administered, will get funds back,” said Letsinger. “The state takes a small percentage for processing. I don’t know what that will be yet. There were a couple of different amounts that they could bill for. It went up to $40.”
The last grant Letsinger requested was one that would keep a COVID-19 testing site and keep the tests free for those who request one through December 31, 2021.
“The Health Department will be taking back over our Lifeplex community COVID testing site. Several counties in the area are dropping their testing sites so we felt like it was important that we have some sort of service area for people to get free testing. We are going to pick that up and these are funds that the state is giving us to continue that test site.”
The Marshall County Council members approved all grant requests with unanimous votes for each individual request.
