Nearly 500K Alabamians Have Received A Dose Of COVID-19 Vaccine

MONTGOMERY, AL — Drive-by clinics to receive the COVID-19 vaccine have popped up all over Alabama in the last week, although the state still lags behind most in the percentage of people vaccinated.

Alabama has the lowest vaccination rate among all states, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Meanwhile, it had among the highest rates in the U.S. for positive coronavirus tests over the past month at 29.1 percent, according data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.

As of Friday, 455,097 people in Alabama had received at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, with 125,553 Alabamians fully vaccinated. That makes up 581,317 doses administered out of 993,715 allocated to the state.

One of the issues surrounding the low vaccination rate is a lack of communication regarding making appointments. As part of a statewide effort to accelerate COVID-19 vaccination in Alabama, mass vaccination clinics were held in each of the state’s public health districts February 8-12.

Reports from the Hoover Met relayed that appointments were full quickly and as many as 1,000 doses of the vaccine were administered each day this past week. In some areas, not all of the vaccines are being used. Reports of leftover vaccines have surfaced in Shelby County and in Calhoun County last month.

A total of 76,453 doses of the vaccine were administered at mass vaccination spots in the state this past week:

• Birmingham (3 sites): 12,139 doses
• Huntsville: 12,000 doses
• Mobile (4 sites): 22,325 doses
• Anniston: 5,000 doses
• Dothan: 6,100 doses
• Montgomery: 8,000 doses
• Selma: 5,000 doses
• Tuscaloosa: 5,889 doses

However, as successful as many of the mass vaccination spots were this past week, the state does not have enough doses of the vaccine to keep these clinics up and running for long.

"We don’t, at the moment, have the ability to continue doing these week after week," state health director Dr. Scott Harris said Friday.

Most COVID-19 vaccines will require two doses spaced 21 or 28 days apart. People will need both doses to be protected. It is possible that a person could be infected with the virus that causes COVID-19 just before or just after vaccination and then get sick because the vaccine did not have enough time to provide protection or because someone did not get both recommended vaccine doses.