Due to a shortage of vaccine supplies COVID-19, Cobb and Douglas Public Health said on Friday that they are temporarily “pausing” consultations for the public.
Since the beginning of January, the health agency had been opening service hours every Friday the following week, prioritizing health professionals, first responders and people with ages. 65 and older.
But the latest update, which does not specify when vaccinations can be resumed, indicated that current supplies may not increase until March or April.
Inside a message on your website, Cobb and Douglas Public Health also said that those who have a previous appointment for a first or second dose “will not be affected by this change unless you have been contacted”.
The agency said that when more bookings are available, they will be posted on its website and on social media accounts.
In your status update on Friday—you can read it by clicking here—Cobb and Douglas Public Health said they administered 14,000 doses of COVID vaccines since early January, including 11,896 at Jim Miller Park in Marietta.
But only 410 doses were administered to Jim Miller on Friday, compared to nearly 700 that had been delivered on Monday. This number was provided at a meeting on Tuesday to Cobb commissioners by Dr. Janet Memark, director of Public Health at Cobb and Douglas.
In his comments, Memark said that the agency was “prioritizing second doses” and that “if we have a little more, we will schedule a first dose”.
But as the week progressed, the doses of vaccine available began to run out.
The Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are being administered by Cobb and Douglas Public Health, which hopes it will soon obtain supplies of the Astra Zeneca and Johnson and Johnson vaccines. The latter is a single dose vaccine.
As of Saturday, there were 50,173 confirmed cases of COVID in Cobb County from PCR tests and another 11,923 from antigen tests since last March.
A total of 693 have died in Cobb since then, and 38 have been reported since Monday. This includes 13 deaths reported on Wednesday and 12 on Thursday.
The case rate is starting to drop slightly in Cobb, as well as the community’s spread figures. On Saturday, the average of 14 days of cases per 100,000 people in the county was 661, after exceeding 1,000 earlier this month.
Earlier this week, school board members and superintendents from Cobb and the Atlanta metropolitan area sent letters to Governor Brian Kemp asking that school officials be prioritized for vaccines, but on Tuesday his spokesman said Kemp “ has repeatedly said – to this day – that as soon as Georgia begins to receive a larger supply of vaccines, teachers and school staff will be absolutely included in any expanded criteria. ”
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