Mississippi's drive-thru coronavirus vaccination sites are operating at a higher volume this week. Thousands of appointments that were scheduled last week had to be rescheduled as the Department of Health shut down many of the state's drive-thru vaccination sites. Governor Tate Reeves says this will raise the number of appointments this week from around 60,000, to more than 80,000. Reeves says "We believe that we have adequate staff at every single one of the sites, and wait times may be a little bit longer, 30, 40 maybe 50 minutes to get from beginning to end. Maybe an hour at some sites. But by and large, we're not seeing significantly longer waits."
Ice-covered roads also delayed shipments of around 9 million coronavirus vaccines nation-wide, and Governor Reeves says many of those delayed doses were housed at a distribution center in Olive Branch.
State Epidemiologist Dr. Paul Byers says vaccine shipments within Mississippi were also delayed by the dangerous driving conditions and power outages. "Certainly that impacted the vaccine numbers for last week, not only the clinics that we had to delay due to the weather but also with our private providers out in the communities being able to receive vaccine to administer," says Byers. "We utilized vaccine at we had at our pharmacy to make sure that we kept those clinics going."
Dr. Byers says the Department of Health will soon post an online vaccine locator to help residents find coronavirus vaccine providers nearby.
