 Would you rather pay $650 or $66 for a smartphone? Simple. With the Appalachian Advantage Plan, pay less upfront, and then just a few dollars more every month. Better service, bigger savings. That's today's Appalachian Wireless. Today marks a historic day as free COVID-19 vaccinations are being distributed to the most vulnerable population right here in Williamson, West Virginia. I have no idea how many cars have gone through. I just know they've been backed up down the mountain since seven o'clock this morning. We expect, realistically, maybe to process a couple hundred vaccines today just because it's time-wise. That's probably all you've got time to do. Keith Blankenship, the administrator at the Mingo County Health Department, says that around 48 hours ago, they received word that around 570 doses of the COVID-19 vaccine would be available for distribution by their department. Since they provided free COVID-19 testing at the Williamson Memorial Hospital around April of last year, the health department decided to administer free COVID-19 vaccinations to the public. The only requirement being whoever wanted to receive the vaccine must be 80 years of age or older. So we do have that one requirement which is given to us by the governor in his phase-in plan for the vaccination program for the state of West Virginia. We are a vaccine. Anybody comes up to the hill that's in that age category. You cannot be a 40-year-old caregiver. You cannot be relative really like that. We are sticking to the governor's directions. With a total of 22 deaths in Mingo County, the majority of which are age 65 and older, Blankenship says addressing the more vulnerable population could help lower their death rate as elderly are more susceptible to complications from COVID-19. We have a lot of sectors of our population that needs to be vaccinated quickly. In other words, you can name them all day long, but I think it's a good choice to start with elderly. I think they deserve it and we should be there. I mean, we've been doing health care providers, we've been doing first responders already, we've been doing other things. I know I think the teachers is on board real, real soon, but we need to take care of this population. And thanks to the addition of 17 nurses from the Mingo County Extended Adult Nursing Program in Del Barton, West Virginia, the drop-through event was fully staffed and able to assist a larger number of elderly. But we're bringing them around the building. We're doing the documentation, recording the information in a computer software called VAM. So we're live and up to date. They come to the vaccine. They get vaccinated. We do it up to four cars at a time as they come through with all the nurses we have. They're given a card to remind them when the next vaccination is and then they're asked to pull around to a holding area where we're asking to stay in line for 15 minutes to make sure we have no side effects as far as allergy like that. We'll work with a lot of good people, Wimps and the Health and Wellness Center who grace us to use the property up here. We've got Hurley Drug, our Mingo County Health Department, we've got the Mingo County Sheriff's Department, the Wimps and Fire Department, I probably can't name them all. It just goes on and on. I spoke with Karen Justice, who said that there was no distance too far to drive her father, Joshua, to receive the COVID-19 vaccination as his previous elements put him at a higher risk than most his age. He's older, we're really concerned because he's got black lungs in the coal mines and a lot of other health problems and so we traveled an hour and a half for him to get this shot and it'll be freedom that I can take him supper, his medicines and not have that worry. Karen says she only had to wait 15 minutes before reaching the registration point. A pale comparison to the additional time the vaccine would allow her to spend with her father worry-free. It's not been bad at all, in fact, I'm kind of shocked that there are not more people taking advantage of this situation for our elder. We really appreciate them hosting an event like this where so many can just come through and get it and like I say, save so many lives and I just wish more people would take advantage of this opportunity. If they remain on the hill and we don't get them all vaccinated today, we will come back and expect to see many, many more of these events over the next coming days because it is our objective to make sure everybody gets vaccinated and as long as the federal government and the state of Washington can provide us the vaccines, we're here to do our job. Reporting from Williamson, West Virginia, I'm Jeremy Justice with Mountain Top News.