As COVID vaccines arrive across Alabama, the state is approaching to offer the vaccine to any adult who wants it.
Alabama State Health Officer Scott Harris said the state will offer COVID-19 vaccines to anyone 16 years and older ahead of the nationwide target on May 1 set by President Joe Biden.
“The president has asked all states to be fully eligible by May 1,” Harris said. “Certainly Alabama will do it on May 1, but it could be much earlier, depending on how many surveys we see.”
Alabama has now administered more than 1.3 million doses of COVID vaccine in the state, with 866,000 people (more than 22% of the total adult population) receiving at least one dose and more than half a million fully vaccinated.
On March 22, the state will expand the vaccine expansion for people 55 and older, additional categories of essential workers, including restaurant workers and bank tellers, and people with health conditions, including obesity, cancer, kidney disease and smoking.
“We think it will more than double the number of eligible people in our part,” Harris said. “Probably between half and two-thirds of all the adults in the state will be covered.”
Harris said the state could open it to all adults in the coming weeks, as Mississippi and Alaska have already done, and other states have announced they will do so.
‘I think this is the most important [factor] is what is our available offer? Harris said. ‘If everyone is prioritized, then essentially no one is preferred, if you do not have enough vaccine to go around.
“And it’s just a crazy rush to beat everyone in front.”
No additional risk groups have been identified in Alabama’s vaccine award plan. The next phase identified in the plan includes all adults.
“We will be eligible for all the risk groups we have stratified from Monday,” Harris said. ‘And if there’s a lot of demand, and the lines are miles away and there are no doses on the shelf, it would still not make sense to extend it to everyone.
“But if we see that the question is not, then we will expand it.”
The mobile vaccination clinics for Alabama National Guard will open next week, with a six-week rotation in 24 rural provinces. Harris said there is a “very good chance” that the admission to the vaccine could be extended before the first six weeks of rotation ends.
Harris said the state still sees small increases in the number of doses it receives, to about 110,000 to 120,000 first doses per week, with separate shipments to cover two-dose appointments for the Pfizer and Modern vaccines, which require two doses. .
Alabama has given just over 20,000 doses of one-time Johnson & Johnson vaccine, but Harris said production of the recently approved vaccine is still increasing and that the state will not release large quantities of the vaccine until next month. do not receive.
Alabama this week unveiled new vaccination data on the province, showing many provinces, including many in the Black Belt and other rural areas. More than 25% of the population has already received at least one dose of the vaccine.
“It’s not an accident,” Harris said. “It’s a very deliberate strategy on our part to try to reach the people who are most vulnerable.”