By Matthew Osborne and Beau Evans
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COVID-19
Habersham County Schools are hoping to have COVID-19 vaccination clinics set up at all schools on Thursday, March 11, for staff members who want the shot.
School employees begin their period of eligibility for the vaccine on Monday, March 8.
“This is dependent on vaccine availability. The health department plans to administer the Johnson & Johnson vaccine at each school. If staff prefer the Moderna vaccine they will offer it at the aquatic center vaccination site,” said Crystal Holcomb, Director of Nursing for Habersham County Schools.
The health departments are waiting on supplies of the recently-approved Johnson & Johnson vaccine, which is a one-shot process, as opposed to the two-shot Pfizer and Moderna vaccines.
School officials plan to vaccinate non-school employees on Friday, March 12, at a site to be determined, if the vaccines arrive on time.
Superintendent Matthew Cooper said an update would be provided at Monday’s Board of Education meeting.
As of Wednesday, the school system had five students and 12 staff members dealing with positive cases out of nearly 8,000 people.
Gov. Brian Kemp will be visiting the mass vaccination site in Habersham County on Monday morning. The site has administered 8,044 vaccines since opening Feb. 22, including 988 on Tuesday and 786 on Wednesday.
Habersham Medical Center has received enough supply of vaccines to get its waiting list clear and begin accepting calls for appointments again. HMC just received 600 new doses of Moderna, and the number to call to request an appointment is 855-990-HELP (4357), Option 2.
Habersham County had a seven-day moving average of 8.3 cases of COVID-19 per day as of Wednesday. The number was as low as 5.4 cases per day on Feb. 24, and the county has been under 10 cases since Feb. 14. That is the longest stretch under 10 since the county was under 10 cases per day from Oct. 9 to Nov. 14, 2020.
Kemp announced Wednesday that five more mass COVID-19 vaccine sites are set to open in Georgia later this month.
The additional vaccine sites add to four other locations that opened last month in metro Atlanta, Macon, Albany and the one in Habersham County. The new sites will open in Savannah, Columbus, Waycross and Bartow and Washington counties.
All those sites are more than 100 miles from Habersham’s site, and only Bartow County is in the northern part of Georgia. That leaves the Habersham site still serving a good chunk of the state, including all of northeast Georgia and most of the mountains.
The five new sites are scheduled to open on March 17 and administer a minimum of 20,000 doses each week with teachers, adults with behavioral and intellectual disabilities and parents of children with complex medical conditions first in line to receive shots.
“I feel like we’re starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel,” Kemp said at a news conference at the state Capitol.
Georgians can pre-register for a vaccine appointment at myvaccinegeorgia.com even if they do not yet qualify under the governor’s eligibility criteria. They will be notified once they qualify and scheduled for an appointment.
The governor traced his optimism to the more-than 2 million vaccines given so far in Georgia and a coming boost of 83,000 weekly doses from the newly approved Johnson & Johnson vaccine. That will bring Georgia’s weekly vaccine shipments to 223,000 doses starting next week.
State officials have faced criticism for Georgia’s slow vaccine distribution since the initial two-dose vaccines started rolling out in December. Kemp has pinned the slow pace to tight vaccine supplies from the federal government.
Batting down criticism on Wednesday, Kemp said more than 860,000 Georgians ages 65 and older have received at least one dose of the vaccine so far, marking about 60% of that vulnerable population.
“I believe that we have done more than most any other state to protect those that are most vulnerable to COVID-19 with the limited supply that has been given to us by the federal government,” Kemp said.
State School Superintendent Richard Woods was scheduled to meet with about a dozen district superintendents about vaccine distribution on Thursday.
The new vaccine sites and shipments come as COVID-19 positive case rates and hospitalizations continue to drop after a spike over the winter holiday season.
Roughly 823,000 people had tested positive for COVID-19 in Georgia as of Wednesday afternoon, with nearly 192,000 more reported positive antigen tests indicating likely positive results.
The virus has killed 15,349 Georgians.
Beau Evans of Capitol Beat News Service contributed to this report.