Geneva County hosts COVID-19 vaccination clinic Saturday; state faces new challenge of getting people to take vaccine

Geneva County will host a mass-vaccination clinic Saturday, one of three sites holding such clinics around the state in the coming week.

“We are receiving now on average about 110,000 to 120,000 doses per week, first doses per week, of vaccine,” State Health Officer Dr. Scott Harris said during a Friday media briefing. “Although, we have learned that we’re going to get a one-time bump in Pfizer of about 14,000 extra doses and a one-time shipment of (Johnson & Johnson) of about 28,300 doses. So that means this coming week, we’ll have a total number of first doses of 156,730 – our biggest number so far.”

The Geneva County drive-thru clinic for first doses will be held from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the Geneva County Farm Center at 2765 E. State Highway 52 near Geneva. No appointments are necessary. A second dose clinic will be held April 17.

Harris said the Alabama Department of Public Health is on track to meet the national May 1 goal of having vaccine available for all adults. But that doesn’t mean everyone will want to be vaccinated.

“I think there will be plenty of vaccine available for people to be vaccinated by summer,” Harris said. “The real issues are going to be getting people to take it. We’ve said it several times here, but the script is going to flip completely from a month ago where people couldn’t find vaccine it seemed like no matter how hard they looked to in April we’re going to have the opposite problem. We’re going to have a lot of vaccine on the shelf and we’re going to be really trying hard to get people to take it.”

Turnout has been lower than expected to clinics conducted by the Alabama National Guard around the state, which Harris said is partially due to weather this week. National Guard clinics can vaccinate 1,000 people in a day, but at some clinics the turnout has been less than half the available vaccinations.

Earlier this week, the National Guard clinic in Covington County had 641 people while a clinic in Sumpter County had 433 people. A Coffee County clinic held Wednesday had 836 people while one in Greene County had 540. Thursday, a clinic in Ozark had 595 people get vaccinated while a clinic in Hale County was rescheduled due to severe weather that cause tornadoes in that part of the state.

Harris said no vaccines were wasted or destroyed due to low turnout, and doses that were reserved for counties hosting clinics are still available in those counties.

Alabama National Guard will hold a clinic for first doses in Troy at the Sportsplex on Enzor Road on April 8, and another at Baker Hill School in Eufaula in April 9.

As the state’s mask mandate is set to expire April 9, Harris asked people to please be responsible and continue to wear masks and social distance.

“Please do the right thing,” Harris said. “Please think about those people who are most vulnerable. There’s nothing magic about April 9 as we’ve said over and over; please continue to wear a mask when you have to be around other people when you’re outside of your home, particularly if you’re someone who is vulnerable because of your age or because of other health problems.”

While the number of COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations in Alabama continue to be down, Harris said there are 113 cases in the state caused by variants, or strains, of the coronavirus. Most of those have been cause by what is commonly called the UK variant with a few caused by California variants of the virus and one case caused by the South African variant.

“We are certainly aware of this and watching this cautiously as some of these strains are more easily to transmit,” Harris said. “Fortunately, our overall case numbers continue to do well. Our strategy, of course, is just to get people vaccinated as quickly as we possibly can.”