While more than 1.5 million Alabamians are now eligible to receive the COVID-19 vaccine, people under 65 with serious medical conditions are still playing the waiting game.
“Unfortunately, Alabama has many of these problems in abundance, chronic health problems like diabetes and heart disease, and even obesity and chronic lung disease,” said Alabama state health officer Scott Harris on Friday. “This group of people represents about a third of our state.”
Harris said the state does not yet have a clear timetable for when it expects to make the vaccine available to those with pre-existing illnesses that make them more likely to have serious problems if they also get COVID-19.
“Everyone deserves to be vaccinated,” said Harris in a media call. “And you know, it’s certainly not because we said that someone is more important than someone else, or someone is more deserving than someone else. The problem is that we just don’t have enough for everyone right now. “
Harris said more than 530,000 Alabamians received at least one dose of the two-dose COVID vaccines, but there are more than 1.5 million people in Alabama currently eligible to receive the vaccine, including people aged 65 and over, doctors, first respondents , teachers, caregivers of children and some food workers and critical infrastructure.
Under the Alabama vaccine allocation plan – compiled based on guidelines from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other federal agencies – the next group of people to qualify for the vaccine would include people with certain health conditions , including cancer, kidney disease, heart problems, immune problems, obesity, smoking, diabetes, pregnancy and more.
So far, there has been no separate isolation for people with more serious illnesses, as opposed to more common conditions such as obesity or smoking, and Harris has given no indication of when this could be made available to the group as a whole.
“The answer to your question,” said Harris, “is that we will make it available as soon as possible. We just don’t have enough now. “
On Friday, Alabama said it received just over 1 million doses of the vaccine, about a third of the total number of doses needed to fully vaccinate those who are currently eligible. Harris said the amount of vaccine the state receives each week is slowly increasing, thanks to improvements in the manufacturing process, but the state does not expect a dramatic increase in supply, unless new vaccines are authorized for use in the U.S.
In the meantime, Harris said the state does not plan to offer the vaccine to additional populations until demand begins to decline among currently eligible groups.
“As long as we are running our clinics and administering all the doses we have, and there is, you know, enough demand that we don’t have vaccines on the shelves, I think we will continue to keep going,” said Harris. “And then, when we see that demand drops slightly, it will be time to expand.”