photo by: Kevin Anderson/Journal-World File Photo

The Lawrence-Douglas County health department's home at the Community Health Facility, 200 Maine St., is pictured in this file photo from July 2010.

While thousands in Douglas County have received the latest COVID-19 booster, Lawrence-Douglas County Public Health is hoping for thousands more, especially as flu season and winter weather get underway.

The health department began administering the new booster, which is more effective against omicron subvariants, about a month ago. Anyone 12 and older is eligible for the booster as long as it’s been two months since the person’s last dose.

The health department’s director of informatics, Sonia Jordan, said the numbers were changing by the week.

“We have an analyst who looks at the data roughly once a week, and so the last data update we did has us at around 7,000 people who have gotten the booster,” Jordan told the Journal-World Friday afternoon.

Lately, Jordan said there’s been a week-to-week increase in how many folks are getting the new booster. That has followed a slow start, which she said may have been attributable to people being confused about who might be eligible.

While the 7,000 who have received a booster so far is a good start, Jordan said there’s plenty of room for improvement.

“I think it was a little bit confusing, because I think people thought ‘Maybe it’s only for the 50-plus (age group),’ or ‘I got my booster last winter,'” Jordan said. “We’ve been trying to do more messaging about that. Most people are very likely eligible for this booster if they haven’t gotten it yet.”

That, and getting an influenza vaccination, will be especially important as the weather cools, Jordan said. That’s because infectious diseases like COVID-19 and the flu are spread more easily when people are spending more time indoors.

Both vaccines work similarly, Jordan said. They prevent complications like hospitalizations and death, but neither of them is guaranteed to prevent disease outright.

Jordan said that although mitigation measures — like wearing a mask and social distancing — are no longer prevalent in public, it doesn’t mean they should be off the table for individuals. Folks who are nervous about being in a public space with a lot of people should still feel free to wear a mask, for example, and there also shouldn’t be any hesitation about staying home if you’re feeling sick.

“We know that those mitigations do work, and even though we’ve moved away from the regulation of them, that doesn’t mean that an individual can’t choose to deploy those mitigations, either for themselves or their family, to try to stay healthy throughout the course of the winter,” Jordan said.

The new COVID boosters and flu shots are readily available at most pharmacies, Jordan said, and the health department has them as well. There’s a mobile COVID vaccine clinic set for Wednesday from 3 to 7 p.m. at the Douglas County Fairgrounds, 1930 Harper St. To register, visit ldchealth.org/getmyvaccine and use the code “101222DFG.”