Governor Tate Reeves is defending his decision to expand coronavirus vaccine access to residents with qualifying health conditions and those 65 and older. The rapid expansion of the vaccinations led to bottlenecks, system crashes and hard feelings. All 52 thousand appointments for drive-thru vaccines filled. Reeves says he acted because the state was lagging behind others in administering the shots. "I couldn’t sit around and be 50th as we were after three weeks without doing something. That's the reason we took it over, that's the reason we set up these sites, that's the reason we did 25,000 shots this week alone."
But as a surge of Mississippians tried calling and logging in to get an appointment, the Department of Health's website and call center were quickly overwhelmed. 69-year-old Preston Cantner of Grenada was trying to schedule an appointment for himself and his 85-year-old uncle. "Ever since then, I have been diligently trying to call these phone numbers and these websites. I've talked to the Health Department and Grenada and getting all this information, but I never, I'm still trying to get a vaccination."
State Health Officer Dr. Thomas Dobbs says he's glad to see such a high demand for the vaccine, but not everyone was able to access the appointments equally. He says some people are not familiar with technology to schedule the appointment, and others don't have transportation. "And it certainly got our vaccination numbers up, but it is making the equity issues that much worse. You can see that of the vaccine distributed, only 15 percent have gone to folks who identify as African American. And this is actually worse than it was a couple of weeks ago. So this is a huge challenge, and we are working to address this."
Dr. Dobbs says the state hopes to add more vaccination sites in the coming weeks, as well as get more clinics in rural areas involved in the vaccination process.
