The Alabama Department of Public Health (ADPH) is reclaiming vaccine doses that haven’t been used in a timely fashion for use elsewhere, Alabama Health Officer Dr. Scott Harris said this week, as he discussed the issues the state has had in getting the vaccine into the arms of eligible recipients.

“If there are cases where people have vaccine they’re not giving that they should be, we’re going to move that to another location,” Harris said in a press conference Thursday. But, he said, the larger problem is, “We just don’t have enough of the vaccine.”

He said the state is receiving 50,000-60,000 doses of the vaccine per week, an amount that is unlikely to change. State allocations are based on population.

Of the roughly 502,000 doses the state has already received, Harris said about 42% has been administered and most of the remaining is reserved for the second shot each individual needs.

“Our strategy is to give them as quickly as possible,” he said.

He acknowledged the frustrations of Alabamians eager to get the vaccine.

“People certainly have a right to expect that we could do things faster,” he said. “I think we can also do things faster, and so we have several things that we’re implementing to make sure that happens.”

To accelerate the pace of vaccinations, county health departments have been directed to “do vaccines all day every day” until they run out of doses, said Harris. Other health department services have been suspended where possible.

The state has also reached an agreement with Walmart to begin administering the vaccine. He said a federal agreement with chain pharmacies is also expected at some point as well. The vaccines administered under the federal agreement will not come from Alabama’s allocated vaccine supply.

Harris said 502 locations in Alabama have been certified to administer the vaccine, but “half of them have not yet received the vaccine because the supply isn’t there.”

The demand locally and statewide has been great. Cullman Regional Medical Center (CRMC) is registering people online for vaccines and administering them to people 75 and older by appointment only.

The hospital has about 3,000 people in the over-75 age group who have registered. So far, slightly more than 1,000 in that age group have received their vaccine. 

Lindsey Dossey, vice president of communications and marketing for CRMC, said they once people have registered at CullmanRegional.com/covidvaccine, they don’t need to do anything else but wait for the hospital to call them to schedule their shot.

“We’re scheduling based on the number of vaccines we know we have,” she said. “We’re only holding back on second doses to ensure people have those when they need them.”

She said the hospital does not know week to week how many doses of the vaccine it’s going to receive.

“We’re working to get everybody scheduled as quickly as we can based on the number of vaccines we have,” she said.

If someone cancels an appointment, CRMC calls another person on the list to get the shot. “Every vaccine we have is going in someone’s arm,” said Dossey.

While the state works to increase the speed of distribution, Harris said the COVID-19 numbers across the state are improving.

“Please continue to do those things we need to do to keep people safe,” he said. “We have a means to an end to keep people safe, we just have to get there.”

As of Friday, CRMC was treating 48 covid patients. Since March of last year, more than 8,000 Cullman residents have had the disease and 108 have died from it. Nationally, the death toll has surpassed 400,000.