December 21, 2020
By: Dwayne Page
The DeKalb County Health Department received its first shipment of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine Monday and began administering it to local first responders and health care providers.
Every county health department in the state was shipped at least 100 doses of the vaccine but some got more based on population for people in Phase 1a1 of the Tennessee Department of Health’s COVID-19 vaccination plan including first responders, home health care providers, student health care providers and staff members.
“We got doses in this morning (Monday) and we are trying to reach out to first responders today to go ahead and start getting that (vaccine) out there,” said Michael Railing, Director of the DeKalb Health Department.
The Tennessee Department of Health announced last week that the state was expected to receive an initial allocation of a total of 115,000 doses of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine over the next two weeks, following Emergency Use Authorization issued by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and its recommended release by the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices. Smaller hospitals that are not receiving the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine are expected to receive Moderna vaccine the week of Dec. 28.
“We are excited to receive these vaccines and see our COVID-19 vaccination activities underway,” said Tennessee Health Commissioner Lisa Piercey, MD, MBA, FAAP. “Tennessee county health department staff members will administer the Moderna vaccine to first responders, home health care providers and student health care providers in partnership with these organizations and their local community emergency management agencies.”
“ We don’t have a shipment date yet for the next round of vaccines. Hopefully as we get more vaccine in as time goes on we can move on through the State of Tennessee’s Covid vaccine plan to serve more people,” said Railing
“A big thanks to the DeKalb County Health Department staff including our first line workers. I am very proud of them. They have gone above and beyond not only with testing but in the vaccination phase,” Railing concluded.