Shipments of vaccine arriving in Georgia this week
The director of the North Georgia Health District confirmed two sobering COVID-19 statistics during a Gilmer County Board of Health teleconference meeting held last week.
There have been more than 1,300 confirmed cases of coronavirus in Gilmer County since the pandemic began, and Gilmer is still considered a high-transmission county, confirmed Dr. Zachary Taylor.
“To date, there have been 1,303 cases reported and 29 deaths. The 14-day case rate per 100,000 is 337 per 100,000. That’s high. We’d prefer for that to be less than 100 per 100,000. Your test positivity rate over a 14-day period is 13.7 percent. That’s also high. We’d like to see that below 5 percent and, preferably, below 2 percent,” he added.
According to the Georgia Department of Public Health’s daily COVID-19 status report, Gilmer’s total case number had risen to 1,369 by Monday, Dec. 14. Of that total number, 152 cases were added in the past two weeks.
“It’s concerning because we’re approaching another holiday where extended family and large groups of friends like to get together and celebrate the Christmas holidays,” Taylor told local Board of Health members. “Those are areas where we (could) increase transmission in the county.”
Taylor said there is some good news on the COVID-19 front. The first shipments of COVID-19 vaccine were expected to arrive in Georgia sometime this week, he noted.
“We have two candidate vaccines, one from Pfizer and one from Moderna, being considered by the FDA for emergency use authorization,” Taylor said.
Per a release later issued by the Georgia Public Health, 5,850 doses of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine arrived Monday, Dec. 14, at two coastal Georgia public health locations, as did “ultracold freezers required for storage and temperature control of the vaccine.” Additional vaccine shipments are expected to arrive later this week at facilities in other parts of the state, including metro Atlanta, the release states.
According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), the goal for Operation Warp Speede is to provide a safe, effective COVID-19 vaccine for distribution by the end of 2020.
Taylor said health care workers and residents and staff of long-term care facilities will be the first two groups that will be able to be vaccinated.
“After that, we’ll move into our first responder community of police and firefighters, the older population and those who are medically vulnerable. Then we will begin vaccinating people who work in critical industries. Once we get through all those groups, we will have vaccinated about half the population. Then we will start vaccinating people who are essentially healthy adults. Hopefully, we’ll be able to start vaccinating healthy adults sometime in April or May,” he added.
The vaccines haven’t been approved for pregnant women or children, Taylor noted.
“They are including children in trials and, hopefully, we will have approval to vaccinate children at some point and we can get them vaccinated sometime in the summer prior to them returning to school,” he added.
When asked by Gilmer Board of Health Chairman Lex Rainey if Georgia’s health departments will be the lead agency to administer the coronavirus vaccine, Taylor said health departments will be involved, but it will be more of a coordinated effort that includes many entities.
“Whoever signs up to be a vaccine provider can provide it. That includes hospitals and private practices. It will certainly include pharmacies like Walgreens or CVS. It will be a concerted effort across many parts of our health care community,” he added.