Dr. Harris

Alabama State Health Officer Dr. Scott Harris is trying to get the word out about the upcoming COVID-19 vaccines.

Alabama State Health Officer Dr. Scott Harris spoke with The Sun last week to discuss the incoming arrival of COVID-19 vaccines to Alabama and the state’s current struggle with the virus.

In the past two months cases of COVID-19 all over the state have spiked – and with it hospital admittance – despite the continued mask mandate by Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey. While the mask mandate seemed to help mitigate the spread of the virus, as more Alabamians get back to some form of normalcy the virus has spiked again.

“I think there isn’t one single explanation you can point to,” Harris said of the resurgence of the virus. “The major issue is we have more people out trying to have normal activity and not necessarily doing everything we would advise them to do.

“I think a lot of people are doing a great job of wearing masks and there were some people that were never willing to wear a mask and I don’t know if that’s changed all that much. We clearly have a lot more people doing a lot more things, like sporting events, holidays, family reunions and parties. People are returning to those activities while unfortunately not always doing so in a safe way.”

Harris said that currently social distancing, sanitizing and wearing facial coverings or masks is the only option to combat the virus we have at the moment, so it’s imperative that residents follow those guidelines.

“It’s all we have. We still don’t have highly effective medicine for this and we don’t have the vaccine yet,” Harris said. “We don’t know anything else to slow the spread. The only tools we have in the toolbox are staying away from people or wearing a mask and trying to social distance as much as possible.”

Harris said that Alabama expects to receive its first doses of the COVID-19 vaccine developed by Pfizer the week before Christmas and more doses from the vaccine developed by Moderna 1-2 weeks after that. Harris said that its expected that two more vaccines – one from Johnson and Johnson and another developed by Astrazeneca – are expected in early 2021.

After the FDA grants an emergency use authorization the top priority groups for receiving the vaccine will be healthcare workers and nursing home residents.

“So, they will be the first people to get the vaccine and the most important message for people to understand is that we won’t get nearly enough vaccine to go around to start,” Harris emphasized. “Even those two (priority) groups we mentioned that are No. 1 priority may take several weeks before we can cover those groups.

“What we hope is that people in the public don’t hear that the vaccine is coming and just think, ‘Well, I don’t have to wear a mask anymore.’ When the first vaccines get here it won’t be time to stop doing those things we’re doing, because we’ll still have several more months before we can get most people immunized.”

Harris said that he hopes that the general public will be able to start getting the vaccine by the spring but it may be summer before most people can be immunized.

Harris also said that more than 100 COVID-19 vaccines are currently in development but the first two – by Pfizer and Moderna – are reported to have between a 90-95 percent effective rate, which is twice as much as the flu vaccine in a typical year.

“The preliminary information that we have on these first two vaccines is that they are more than 90 percent effective and as much as 90 percent effective,” Harris said. “With the flu those vaccines are 30-40 percent effective, or 50 percent in a good year.”

Harris said that typically only 40 percent of Alabamians receive a flu shot every year, so it’s important for residents to take this vaccine seriously, because it may be our only shot of beating COVID-19.

“The vaccine is the only way we see to get out of this,” he flatly said. “We don’t have another strategy that can fix things. It’s really important that people do this.”

The good news is that if the vaccines are as effective as reported then it will be much easier for it to impact the virus’ spread in communities.

“If it turns out to be that effective you may not need quite as many people to get it,” Harris said. “The more effective the vaccine is the less people that need to take it to interrupt disease transmission.

“When you only have 40 percent of people taking a vaccine that is only 30-40 percent effective then you still have a lot of transmission, but if you have 30 or 40 percent of people taking a vaccine that is 95 percent effective that would be a lot more effective because you’re really shutting down transmission.”

Harris said that it’s also important to discuss what vaccine would be best for each person because some vaccines may not be approved for certain populations.

“These vaccines may not all be appropriate for a given person. It depends on who they are approved for,” Harris said. “For example, if one of the vaccine trials didn’t recruit enough people with diabetes then it may be that the vaccine isn’t approved in use with people with diabetes. Not every vaccine will be able to be used by every person.”

Another battle that Harris and other health officials are involved in is with misinformation and conspiracy theories. Vaccines have always been a hot target for conspiracies and that has been the case with anything involving COVID-19. Harris said that his team is working hard to get correct information out to the public.

“We’re doing our best to get the message out in every way we know how. Part of it is doing interviews like this with the media to get the facts out and inform readers or viewers,” Harris said. “We have people doing things on social media, print and broadcast media campaigns, we’re working with a lot of social organizations, public officials and faith-based organizations.

“We want them to hear what we’re saying and have the opportunity to ask us questions so that hey can have the information and be able to convince people that the vaccine is going to be safe and effective, which is what we believe. Those people can serve as the trusted voices in their communities. There are plenty of people that don’t know who I am and wouldn’t listen to me if they did, but there is someone that they listen to and get their information from. Maybe it’s a doctor or local official or minister or media outlet that they trust or believe in. We are trying to reach out to as many of those folks as we can.”

(0) comments

Welcome to the discussion.

Keep it Clean. Please avoid obscene, vulgar, lewd, racist or sexually-oriented language.
PLEASE TURN OFF YOUR CAPS LOCK.
Don't Threaten. Threats of harming another person will not be tolerated.
Be Truthful. Don't knowingly lie about anyone or anything.
Be Nice. No racism, sexism or any sort of -ism that is degrading to another person.
Be Proactive. Use the 'Report' link on each comment to let us know of abusive posts.
Share with Us. We'd love to hear eyewitness accounts, the history behind an article.