First Lady Biden To Tour Youth Vaccination Site Amid Flagging Rates In Georgia

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A nurse vaccinates a college student in Macon in April. But the pace of COVID-19 vaccinations in Georgia has sharply slowed and plateaued since.

Credit: Grant Blankenship

First lady Jill Biden will visit Georgia on Thursday to promote COVID-19 vaccinations among the state’s young people. 

Biden is scheduled to visit a mobile vaccination clinic at Beach High School in Savannah. There she’ll tour with Sen. Raphael Warnock and Savannah Mayor Van Johnson as a part of the Biden administration’s larger effort to get more people vaccinated. 

According to Georgia Department of Public health data obtained by GPB, only about 82,000, or about 6%, of the state’s 12- to 15-year-olds have been fully vaccinated. Vaccine uptake ranges from a high of about 13% of kids in the Athens suburb of Oconee County to a low of no children vaccinated at all in rural Quitman County in southwest Georgia.

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SOURCE: Georgia DPH

Fewer than half of the first doses of vaccine given to young people in Georgia have been followed up with the second dose that finalizes vaccination. Studies of the effectiveness of the Pfizer vaccine, the one vaccine approved for young people, show its single shot effectiveness drops off steeply against the more contagious and now widespread Delta variant.

The clinic at Beach High School in Savannah runs from 2 to 4:30 p.m. and is free and open to the public. Appointments through the Chatham Health District site, chdcovidvax.org, are suggested but not required.