158,000 Alabamians Have Received COVID-19 Vaccine

MONTGOMERY, AL — Alabama is behind most states in the country in the distribution of the COVID-19 vaccine, but the Alabama Department of Public Health reported Monday that roughly 158,000 Alabamians have received the vaccine so far.

As of Tuesday morning, 158,116 vaccines had been administered statewide. The ADPH reported that 446,150 doses of the vaccine have been delivered to the state out of 640,150 allocated to Alabama.

The ADPH reported Tuesday that the state has now had 426,523 coronavirus cases, an increase of 2,495 over the last 24 hours. The state added 5 deaths to bring the total to 6,126. In the past two weeks, the rolling average number of daily new cases has decreased by 881, a decline of almost 24 percent, according to researchers at Johns Hopkins University. The state reported 2,798 hospitalizations Tuesday, up from 2,654 the day before.

A COVID-19 Vaccine Scheduling Hotline setup last week to schedule the vaccinations crashed within hours of being launched. The hotline received 1.1 million phone calls on the first day.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last week reported Alabama ranked last in vaccines distributed per capita.

Dr. Karen Landers of the ADPH told WBRC that the state is trying to manage the allocation to reach as many people as possible. "The next step is going to be determining how far we spread the vaccine we have over a larger group of people recognizing that’s going to diminish the overall numbers of highest risk person that we can vaccinate," Landers said. "At the end of the day, in order to vaccinate more people, we need more vaccine."

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