The need to ramp up COVID-19 vaccinations in Georgia is taking on greater urgency amid the third wave of the virus and an increase of cases involving a more infectious strain of the disease.
But Georgia already has been shipped almost all of the vaccine doses the state was allocated. A primary challenge now is that Georgia needs more, Gov. Brian Kemp and state health officials stressed Thursday.
“We still have far more demand than supply,” Kemp said at a news conference at the state Capitol.
He announced one stop-gap measure that should help. Starting next week, 40,000 doses that had been sent to CVS and Walgreens for nursing homes will be used by the state, increasing its weekly capacity to about 120,000 doses.
Meanwhile, Georgia on Thursday surpassed 700,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19, an increase of about 100,000 infections in just two weeks. The state also reported 100 net new confirmed deaths, with another 11 deaths deemed probable.
And the state now has five confirmed cases of the highly infectious U.K. strain of the virus, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That includes a case in Cobb County. Only a tiny fraction of COVID tests are analyzed for the strain, so experts say it is likely that it is much more prevalent that the numbers indicate.
Georgia Department of Health Commissioner Dr. Kathleen Toomey told reporters she anticipates additional cases. By March, according to a CDC study, the U.K. strain could become the dominant one in the country, which would mean more cases, more hospitalizations for struggling hospitals and, ultimately, more deaths, the CDC report warned.
A bit of good news: Hospitalizations have been dipping slightly since a peak earlier this month. While state data showed that more than 5,300 COVID-19 patients were being treated in Georgia hospitals at 4 p.m. on Thursday, Kemp said that number was the lowest in two weeks.
Still, hospitals are struggling with high patient loads, and the governor implored Georgians to not consider the decline an “all clear signal” to return to pre-pandemic practices.
Credit: Alyssa Pointer / Alyssa.Pointer@ajc.com
Credit: Alyssa Pointer / Alyssa.Pointer@ajc.com
“Our hospitals cannot handle another surge of COVID-19 patients on top of their current workload,” Kemp said.
State officials also said at Thursday’s news conference that they are working to improve the vaccination rollout, in the face of mounting criticism.
Many elderly residents have had trouble making appointments or setting up times to get a second shot, saying county websites aren’t working or no one is answering or returning telephone calls. Officials said the state is working to streamline the process for getting appointments.
Officials also said they are working on plans to expand the number of vaccine providers and noted that more people are offering to volunteer in the vaccination administration process.
So far, Georgia providers have administered 591,438 doses, slightly more half of the doses the state has received, state data show. That rate is worse than nearly every other state’s, though Georgia officials again Thursday said that the federal data is often two or three days behind.
For now, Kemp said, there are no plans to expand vaccine eligibility as the state waits on more information from President Biden’s administration about its plan to distribute more doses.
All 478,725 doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine allocated to Georgia already have been shipped. Of the 652,700 doses of the Moderna vaccine allocated to Georgia, all but 6,000 doses have been shipped.
“The biggest impediment now is having an adequate supply,” Toomey said.
The Biden team has repeatedly said it wants to have 100 million vaccinations in its first 100 days in office. About 16.5 million vaccinations have been administered since late December when the program began, an average of about 550,000 a day.
White House officials announced Thursday a plan to have 100 federally-supported community vaccination centers in the next month. They also said the CDC will launch a program to make vaccines available to communities in their local pharmacies beginning next month.
