By Chad Koenen

Publisher

About 70 Brunswick/Lunds employees made the one block walk from the New York Mills based facility to the City Hall Ballroom on Thursday to get in line for a COVID-19 vaccine. 

Contributed photo
About 70 Brunswick/Lunds employees and several community members received the COVID-19 vaccine on Thursday as part of a vaccination clinic. The vaccination clinic was sponsored by Brunswick/Lunds.

The vaccine clinic was hosted by Brunswick/Lunds to not only allow employees a chance to get the COVID-19 vaccine, but also help out the greater NY Mills community as well. Approximately 95 people were vaccinated as part of the shot clinic.

“We have been working for several months at all of the Brunswick facilities, trying to pull together what the states are calling pods,” said Brian Hines of Brunswick. “We applied to be one of those pods at the NY Mills facility and got accepted.”

As part of the program, Otter Tail County Public Health and Brunswick/Lunds helped make appointments for employees that wanted to receive the COVID-19 vaccine. On Thursday, Hines said 70 employees received the one shot Johnson and Johnson COVID-19 vaccine, while the remaining vaccines were distributed to people in the NY Mills community who had yet to receive a COVID-19 vaccine. 

Since many employees work on the line throughout the day, making an appointment to get a COVID-19 vaccine after hours was a bit of a challenge for some Brunswick/Lunds employees. Hines said the goal was to make it easier for employees to get a COVID-19 vaccine during regular business hours with a vaccine clinic in town. He said it was also important to open the COVID-19 vaccine clinic to the general public, as well as just employees.

“We didn’t want it to just be a Brunswick thing, but open it up to the community,” said Hines. 

Following the success of their first COVID-19 vaccine clinic, Hines said future vaccine clinics could be held later this spring if the demand for the shots continues.