UAB Hospital announced Friday plans to open two additional appointment-only COVID-19 vaccination sites in Jefferson County.
UAB’s Dr. Sarah Nafziger told reporters Friday that drive-thru locations at Birmingham’s Parker High School and at the Hoover Metropolitan Complex in Hoover will join UAB’s existing drive-thru site at UAB Highlands.
“We are ecstatic about being able to vaccinate more people,” Nafziger said.
The Hoover Met location will administer vaccines for those 75 and older beginning Feb. 2. Nafizger said an opening date for the Parker High School site hasn’t yet been set.
To schedule an appointment for a vaccine, UAB Hospital and Cooper Green Hospital patients can register at uabmedicinevaccine.org. Non-UAB and Cooper Green patients can register by visiting jeffcoema.org and clicking on the green “Vaccine Info Registration Form” button.
“Invitations will then be sent to these patients, and we’ll confirm their appointment locations and times,” Nafziger said. “Some of these patients may receive a phone call if it’s people who don’t use electronic messaging.”
Nafziger stressed the importance for the public not to register for vaccinations more than once.
“Please. If you’ve already called or gone online to register to receive [a] vaccine at UAB, or the Jefferson County vaccine call center website, there’s no need to do it again. It’s not going to get you served any faster, and it will slow down the process, as we have to remove duplicate entries from the system,” Nafizger said.
Naziger said it was unclear how many doses of vaccine UAB would get to supply those drive-thru sites, but said she expected the hospital would know later on Friday.
“If vaccine supply was adequate and on hand, UAB could vaccinate 17,000 people per week. That’s what we estimate but remember, we don’t have that much vaccine available right now,” Nafziger said.
State Health Officer Dr. Scott Harris earlier on Friday announced the state would open vaccinations up to those aged 65 and older, and other frontline workers, including employees in the education sector, grocery store workers, postal workers, correctional officers and others.
Harris expressed concern, however, that the state still doesn’t have enough vaccines to handle the numbers of people who are eligible.
“Telling hundreds of thousands of Alabamians that they’re not eligible for the vaccine when all the neighboring states are — they’re giving it to those populations — is not a situation that we can sustain forever,” Harris said. “And yet at the same time, the math tells us there’s not enough to go around.”
President Joe Biden earlier this week announced that the federal government would be shipping additional doses of the Moderna vaccine to states for at least the next three weeks. Harris said Alabama is set to receive 10,000 more doses each week for the next three.
Those additional doses are to be administered at eight new drive-thru clinics at eight sites, where plans call for 1,000 vaccinations each day, for five days each week. Those drive-thru clinics are to begin on Feb. 8 in Huntsville, Anniston, Birmingham, Tuscaloosa, Montgomery, Selma, Dothan and Mobile.
