Jackson Free Press

It is crucial to stop the spread of the covid-19 virus through vaccination, a 65-year-old woman who gave her name as Hazel said at the City of Jackson's March 6 vaccination event at the Jackson Convention Complex of her motivation for registering.

"I brought my family and my husband and my daughter. So we all out here getting us a shot. And it was really nice," she told the Jackson Free Press at the event. "What we try to (do is) keep from getting all this virus and stopping this virus, that's what we're trying to stop, to be able to do what we need to do, so that we can have a better life."

The City of Jackson held the vaccination day for 2,000 people to ensure that the capital city is on the way to herd immunity, Mayor Chokwe A. Lumumba said in an interview posted to the City's Facebook page.

"This is a very critical and necessary day because this is our effort of getting to herd immunity, getting a community that's safe, getting some semblance of normalcy back into our world, and we won't be able to do that until we better position our community to get vaccinated so that we don't have the frequency of infection of covid-19," Lumumba said.

The administration had scheduled the day earlier for Feb. 20 but canceled it because of the February winter weather. The participants got the Pfizer vaccines and will come back on March 27 for the second shot.

The mayor said the Saturday initiative was in conjunction with the Department of Health and other partners, and the next step is taking vaccines to different parts of the community, via collaboration with churches and other stakeholders.

"But in addition to the follow-up for this particular event, we're making certain that we partner with the health department to meet people where they are. We're looking at working with churches and other credible messengers (to) help our community get vaccinated," Lumumba said.

Fifty-four-year-old Dwayne Johnson registered online and described the experience on the vaccination day as smooth and simple. "It took about five minutes to register, about 30 minutes, the total time from start to finish with the vaccine, everything's running real smooth," he said.

At the beginning of the vaccination process in the state, the majority-Black city of Jackson and Hinds County did not have any location set up for vaccination, drawing the ire of the city leaders, who felt that the city was being shortchanged.

Working With the Community

Jackson Human and Cultural Services Deputy Director David Lewis explained to the Jackson Free Press in an interview at the convention center that the department’s outreach to the community increased awareness for the program.

"We wanted to make sure that we got to citizens who weren't able to get shots. So we worked with community partners, churches to identify in advance elder citizens, people who needed to get the vaccine," he said. "We had a call list from the churches and community groups of elders in those communities that we reached out to directly."

Lewis said that on the vaccination day, about 100 people receive vaccination every 20 minutes and that calling numbers to set up appointments avoids the rush associated with public sites was more accessible than the governor's social media updates and the need to use technology.

On March 4, two days before the vaccination day, the Mississippi State Department of Health opened the vaccination eligibility requirement so more people can get on the roll, reducing the age to 50 and including teachers. Without that expansion, Lewis explained that the 2,000 vaccination slot might not have been filled, even with all their outreach.

"We got to a point where there were about less than a thousand of the slots filled a couple of days ago," he said. "And then we worked with the state’s department of health (and) they opened up the category to teachers, to people over the age of 50; that was a statewide decision and then we started getting more calls.”

"Then I think at the last minute we said, you know, we opened it up a little bit more publicly for like on the website, so people could make some last-minute (appointments) to kind of fill the rest of that out."

Sixty-two-year-old Jenny Tailor, who also registered online via covidvaccine.umc.edu, described the experience as great and smooth. "Everything's very well organized," she said. "I kept waiting, and then a friend of mine said, ‘Oh, they've lowered the age to 50.’ So then yeah, I went right then and found an appointment and was able to register immediately."

Email story tips to city/county reporter Kayode Crown at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter at @kayodecrown.