COVID vaccination of healthcare workers will resume on Tuesday.Others’ timetables remain unknown | Coronavirus

Healthcare professionals and first responders will begin lining up at the Anniston City Council Center on Tuesday for the first injection of the COVID-19 vaccine.

Local officials say it’s not yet known when the shot will be open to the public — and it’s easy to realize that Tuesday’s event isn’t open to everyone.

“If you’re in a group you need to know, you’ve already been told,” city spokesman Jackson Hodges said of the vaccination event.

In Calhoun County, the first dose of coronavirus vaccine was given at the end of last month, raising the spirit of the local population when the holidays began. However, vaccination seems to be progressing slowly.

According to the Alabama Department of Health website, the state has received only about 20,000 shots so far, but has been vaccinated more than 120,000 times.

Attempts to contact Alabama Public Health Service officials for more information on the pace of vaccination were unsuccessful on Monday. Because the state has its own vaccination plan, vaccination schedules in neighboring states, such as Georgia, may not match the Alabama plan.

Anniston’s Regional Medical Center will have 2,900 vaccines on hand in December when the first vaccination arrives, first for high-priority hospital workers, then for other health workers and some first I was planning to inoculate the respondents. The Shot Clinic, which begins on Tuesday, targets those workers, local officials said.

Spread of false alarms on vaccines

Health officials were initially worried about public resistance to the vaccine, but many seemed eager for injections on Monday. Hodges and Calhoun County Emergency Management spokeswoman Tiffany Devoa said he heard Monday asking locals who weren’t involved in the medical field if they could take a shot this week. Some of these inquiries are based on false information on social media, Hodges said.

Local authorities know which group will get the next shot, but cannot say the exact time.

According to the schedule released by Hodges on Monday, vaccination campaigns are being organized in stages. The next phase will include shots of people with two or more basic health conditions that could put COVID-19 at risk.

Phase 3 of the plan is vaccination of young adults between the ages of 18 and 30. It is based on the theory that young people have a wider range of social contact and can spread the virus more quickly.

Finally, in Phase 4, healthy middle-aged people are vaccinated.

Local officials said they were still thinking about ways to announce each of the upcoming new stages of the vaccination campaign. And they say there is no clear schedule from ADPH to tell them when those phases will begin.

So far, there is no evidence that anyone in the county has been completely vaccinated. Both the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines require two injections every few weeks.

“The second dose will be distributed at the end of January,” DeBoer said.

Highest hospitalization ever

On Monday, the first working day after the New Year, people may have felt a COVID hangover. The virus killed 157 people here. With 9,752 people infected since the pandemic began, COVID veterans outnumber veterans in the county, which once had a large army base, at least according to the number of veterans at the US Census.

Like the rest of the country, Calhoun County experienced an unprecedented surge in new infectious diseases in December. This is due to many health officials traveling and socializing during Thanksgiving holidays.

The surge may be over: the rate of new infections has recently declined. If there is a post-Christmas surge, it may not appear in health statistics until later this month.

COVID hospitalizations have remained at record highs throughout the state, with more than 3,000 hospitalized beds for the disease.

According to Hodges, city workers disinfected Anniston City Hall on McClellan Boulevard on New Year’s weekend. He said the event was not due to his knowledge associated with any kind of outbreak in the city hall.

“There was nothing but the mayor,” Hodges said.

Mayor Jack Draper said in December that he became ill after two of his close relatives tested positive for the disease last month. Draper said he had never tested positive, but believes it is likely that he was infected with COVID-19.

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