Next week, a large-scale vaccine station is expected to open in Whitehaven. Within weeks, the Shelby County Health Department expects smaller sites, plus big-box stores will be shot centers as Shelby County pushes to administer potentially 5,000 to 6,000 extra weekly doses headed this way.

“It’s critical right now that we look to scale up operations so that when we get more vaccine, we can get it out to the community in a very clear, clean and effective way,” said Alisa Haushalter, head of the Health Department and point person in managing vaccine allotments that appear to change nearly daily.

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On Tuesday, she said the state would be sending 3,000 additional doses for each week in February and that could grow. On top of that, “several thousand” more doses are coming from the Centers for Disease Control to be given in big-box stores through an effort being led by the state Department of Health.

Haushalter did not say which stores, although Monday she said it could include Kroger.

For most of January, Shelby County Health Department has received 8,900 doses, which it shares with local hospitals. As hospitals get their employees vaccinated, the number of doses for the public is expected to increase.

Some doctors affiliated with Baptist Memorial Hospital-Memphis have begun giving shots to qualified patients.

The Health Department is working out agreements with a variety of agencies to open vaccine sites, including municipal locations.

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“They’re in the process of working through the legal work that has to be done to make that a reality,” Judy Martin, head of immunization programs for the Health Department, said at the joint COVID task force briefing Tuesday.

Others, she said, have expressed interest and are looking for sites that meet the requirements.

The new sites have to mesh with the Health Department’s charge of distributing vaccines equitably, which includes serving areas of low wages and the homeless. Sites must have sufficient space to handle a drive-thru line of vehicles and a waiting area where inoculated drivers can wait for 15 minutes to ensure the shot did not cause a reaction. 

“We’re looking at ZIP codes where there is great need,” Martin said. “We are working on MOU (memorandums of understanding) with agencies we will work with in the very near future.”

Late last week, the state Department of Health added correction officers and jailers to category 1a1, the highest priority, and moved families living with medically fragile children higher to category 1c.

According to the state priority list, people age 70 and over will be vaccinated in January and February.

The priorities lag here because Shelby County has the state’s largest population. It, for instance, is vaccinating people 75 and older but not younger.

“Please be aware, it takes us longer to get to other populations, including to younger people,” Martin said.

Since Jan. 11, the Veterans Administration hospital in Memphis has been giving hundreds of shots a day to veterans. It has worked through both the 75- and 65-and-older categories and is now taking appointments for veterans 50 and older, said hospital spokeswoman Willie Logan.

“We have cars lined up around the building daily, and we’ve done between 300-500 cars per day for over a week,” she said in an email early Tuesday.

Those numbers are not included in the Health Department’s tally of shots given in Shelby County; neither are the thousands given through the federal program in local nursing homes by Walgreens and CVS because the federal database does not mesh with state system. 

The Pipkin Building, 940 Early Maxwell, is the base site through June for people needing first doses. It is now granting appointments to people in category 1a2, which are health care workers not associated with a hospital.

The county also launched the Vax Queue standby list on Tuesday.

Numbers

The reproduction rate has dropped to 0.79, a record low for the pandemic, and down from 0.84 last week. The reproductive rate is a measure of how many people one infected person infects, based on current levels of transmission. At less than 1, the disease is no longer spreading in the community.

But with new, more virulent and contagious strains being reported elsewhere, Haushalter cautions against talking about the surge in past tense.

“If those variant strains come to our community, we can see another surge,” she said.

Labs in Shelby County are sequencing the DNA of what could be possible variant strains so the first real cases will be quickly identified.

Any change in diligence among the public in safety protocols could send the numbers back up, Haushalter said.

“So, we really want to caution people not to get complacent. We’re not through the pandemic yet.”

The seven-day average of new cases is 392, below the 450 tripwire for adding restrictions. The 14-day average is 427.

In Shelby County, 4,884 people have active cases of COVID. At the current reproduction rate, that will produce 2,892 cases in 10 days and 4,598 over 20 days.

The positivity rate is 12%, which indicates most people are getting tested when they have symptoms. The number of people getting tested is also trending down.

“We want to continue to encourage people to get tested, and particularly those who are under 40 or those that work in professions that they’re more likely to be exposed to COVID,” Haushalter said.

Those fields are warehousing, health care and education.