The bumpy rollout of COVID-19 vaccines in Tennessee and across the nation is leaving residents frustrated and confused.
“It’s not fair to the people, because whoever is fastest or happens to see it on the internet gets in line, but the disadvantaged groups in the county and the ones that live at the far end, they get left out,” said Steve Lamb, director of the Marion County Emergency Management Agency. “It’s not an equitable process.”
Vaccines were distributed in counties surrounding Chattanooga on Saturday, though several ran out of doses well before the stations were scheduled to close. Lines of cars mirrored similar scenes in Chattanooga last week as demand for the vaccine overwhelmed supply.
“We knew in advance that we were going to have 100 doses on Saturday,” Lamb said. “And based on demand it ran just like we thought it would. It was chaos for two-and-a-half hours, and we ran out of medicine. The first car showed up at 4:30 in the morning, according to the police department. When I got there a little after 7, we already had more cars in line than we had vaccines for.”
Lamb said officials in Marion and some other counties are working to set up a meeting with state health officials to find solutions because Saturday’s vaccination effort left many people without access.