Hayden Wiggs
Though the University of Mississippi vaccine task force hopes the university will receive its COVID-19 vaccinations sometime in mid-February, six other universities in the Southeastern Conference have already begun immunizing their staffs and students with pre-existing conditions.
To distribute the vaccine, UM plans to utilize the structure of Operation Immunization, the School of Pharmacy’s annual provision of flu shots to the university community. The vaccine administration team that distributed the flu shots has undergone additional training to distribute COVID-19 vaccines, and Provost Noel Wilkin said it is a team in which he is “extremely confident.”
Dr. Lauren Bloodworth, an advisor to the Operation Immunization event and a clinical associate professor of pharmacy practice, said the vaccinations will take place in the Tad Smith Coliseum once operations begin. Appointment times will be available from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday, with extended hours on Wednesdays.
“We want to give people evening hours to come as well,” Bloodworth said in a panel on Monday. “We’re hoping that if we have vaccines, we will administer 400-500 vaccines per day.”
Bloodworth also said that the university has been in contact with administrators at Auburn University, which received its first doses of the vaccine in early January. The school received 3,500 doses of the Moderna vaccine and began administering them immediately, with frontline healthcare workers receiving priority.
“When we learned that Auburn had gotten vaccines, we immediately reached out and bounced ideas and strategies off one another,” Bloodworth said.
The University of Florida has also received the Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines, with the first doses arriving in Gainesville on Dec. 14. UF Health is following the state of Florida’s recommendations for prioritizing vaccine administration and only offer vaccines to staff aged 65 and over.
In Lexington, Kentucky, the University of Kentucky has already begun vaccinating kindergarten through 12th grade teachers, healthcare workers and providers and emergency first responders. According to the university’s website, members of the campus community will also continue to be vaccinated.
“(Kentucky) has rightly told us that we are to use every dose we get each week as quickly as possible,” UK President Eli Capilouto said in a Jan. 15 memo to the campus community. “This is our commitment.”
Last week, the University of Missouri announced its plan to schedule 4,000 COVID-19 vaccination appointments with hopes of reopening appointments on Feb. 15 after another allocation of shots.
The University of South Carolina began dispensing vaccinations via Student Health Services in early January, following activation from the South Carolina Department of Health.
Similarly, LSU was allocated a small number of vaccines in early January, which it began distributing on Jan. 13. The University of Arkansas, which began administering vaccinations around the same time, has already distributed shots to approximately 1,000 faculty, staff and graduate assistants.
Still, the University of Mississippi is not the only SEC institution still waiting for on-campus COVID-19 vaccinations. The University of Georgia’s health center has not received vaccines yet, and Vanderbilt University announced last month that it is not eligible to be a vaccine distribution center.
“As this is an evolving situation, we remain in close communication with public health agencies and our Vanderbilt University Medical Center colleagues about vaccination efforts,” Vanderbilt Chancellor Daniel Diermeier said in a press release.
The University of Tennessee and Texas A&M University are suffering from vaccination appointments filling up and consequently being delayed due to a lack of vaccines.
Wilkin said the COVID-19 Vaccine Distribution and Administration Task Force has discussed whether similar delays could become a problem in the university’s vaccine distribution plan.
The Mississippi Department of Public Health experienced a setback in early January following an announcement that more Mississippians would be able to sign up to receive a COVID-19 vaccination. Demand soon overtook the allocated number of vaccines.
Though there is still uncertainty surrounding when UM and Mississippi State University will receive vaccines, university officials said they are still optimistic.
“What I’m confident in is that the faster we get a higher percentage of our community vaccinated, the faster we will be able to relax protocols,” Wilkin said. “The first step in that goal is to vaccinate the entire population. While we do not currently have vaccines on campus, we are ready to administer them when we do.”
