With different states working on COVID-19 vaccination groups, it was inevitable that some moved faster than others.
This month Alabama opened vaccinations for teachers and school staff. which are classified as 1B. Throughout Georgia, teachers worked face-to-face for much of the school year, but Governor Brian Kemp’s administration has not yet expanded teacher recruitment. prioritize older adults instead.
When Marni Bekerman, a middle school program manager at a school on the Atlanta subway, saw it a Facebook group When teachers in Georgia were discussing the possibility of signing up for vaccinations in Alabama, she took the chance.
“I don’t believe in taking the vaccine from people who need it and who need to be a priority first,” she said. “I had always said that if there was a dose that would be thrown away I would love to take it, or if it was legal somewhere and open to education, I would, but I would never take it from someone who who was at high risk. “
“Then when I saw that Alabama was open and the vendors didn’t bother with your address, it checked the boxes.”
Bekerman has been working from home since her daughter was born, she said, but most of her colleagues have worked and taught personally. If she gets her first shot, she’ll be one step closer to returning to work in the building, she said.
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Dozens of volunteers and moderators in the a public Facebook group work to help Georgia residents get vaccines and occasionally recommend people eligible to travel to Alabama. Auburns Walmart, who started offering vaccinations last weekis a two hour drive from Atlanta. The Walmart appointments website does not ask attendees to provide a home address.
Alabama is currently vaccinating health care workers, long-term care workers and residents, first responders, and people 65 and over. Alabama also vaccinates correction officers; Food and farm workers; US Postal Workers; Workers in production, grocery stores, and public transport; Teachers and those working in the education sector; Child minders; Justice; and clergy and ministers. The State receives about 60,000 doses of vaccine per week.
State officials at the Alabama Department of Education have no estimate of how many teachers and educators are currently vaccinated.
Alabama is not tracking the number of people outside of the state seeking vaccines, according to a health department spokeswoman. Earlier in the pandemic, older Alabamians made headlines when frustrated with the initially slow rollout of the state and the complicated waiting listThey went to Mississippi or Florida to look for gunfire.
Most states don’t seem to track vaccinations for non-residents, but Florida values people with non-resident addresses had received 3% of total vaccine doses on Tuesday.
At the start of the pandemic, a Georgian official told AL.com that vaccine providers in their state should “not vaccinate” just because they meet current regulatory standards. Still, Many Alabama residents reported crossings to Bainbridge or Columbus and get gunfire.
The vaccine response is a “federal advantage,” so everyone should generally have equal access to shots regardless of where they live in the US, said Marissa Levine, professor of public health at the University of South Florida.
Of course, that is not true at the moment, although the German government is accelerating and increasingly coordinating its efforts.
The question can remain throughout the pandemic. Shopping for vaccines, or someone who uses their time, resources, and energy to get a vaccine appointment sooner rather than later, is not morally wrong, but it does shed some light on the difficulty the average person faces in navigating through current login options so ethicist. Experts also warned someone is using money or personal influence to skip the line.
As long as access is not even between states and individual communities, shopping is likely to continue at each level that opens.
“This problem in particular shows the importance of having robust and efficient public health infrastructure in every state in our country,” Levine said, referring to the determination of the Centers for Disease Control and Preparation for effective vaccine distribution is essential to state and local health authorities.
“Without that, we risk exactly what we see here. This is an exodus of those people with funds who travel in search of the desired good (in this case COVID vaccination). Although these people can be successfully vaccinated, the lack of robust public health infrastructure everywhere worsens disparate health outcomes. And that affects us all. “
