Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms is encouraging residents to get the coronavirus vaccine a day after public health officials cautioned the nation to prepare for another wave of rising infections.
Bottoms received her first dose of the Pfizer vaccine on Tuesday at Mercedes Benz Stadium in downtown Atlanta. She said she was excited about the process as dozen of residents filled the stadium to be vaccinated.
“There’s light at the end of the tunnel. I know we have such a very long way to go before we are past this pandemic, but teamwork makes the dream work,” she said.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Monday warned of “impending doom” as officials continue to see new daily cases of COVID-19. America leads the world in coronavirus cases and deaths with more than 550,000 deaths among more than 30.3 million cases, according to Johns Hopkins University.
“There’s still potentially very dark days ahead if we let down our guard,” Bottoms said.
President Joe Biden announced on Monday that that 90% of U.S. adults will be eligible to get vaccinated in three weeks, adding that 90% of Americans will live within 5 miles of a place to get a shot.
Three COVID-19 vaccines are approved for emergency use in the U.S. People who receive the vaccines developed by Pfizer and BioNTech or Moderna have to get two shots, but Johnson & Johnson offers a one-dose vaccine.
Georgians age 16 and older are eligible for the COVID vaccine.
The mayor said she waited to get vaccinated until Atlanta’s essential and frontline workers received vaccinations first. A Bottoms spokesperson told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that most of the essential workers who wanted a vaccine have obtained it.
Bottoms said the United States is struggling to address a “vaccine hesitancy” that’s particularly present in communities of color. More than 96 million people nationwide have received at least one vaccine dose, according to CDC data reported on Tuesday.
But for the data broken down by race for more than 50 million people, or 52.5% of those vaccinated, only 8.2% of the people who received at least one dose are Black, 9.3% are Hispanic, and nearly 5% are Asian. Nearly 66% of those vaccinated with at least one dose are white.
Bottoms — who tested positive for COVID-19 last summer along with her husband and one of their children — told the AJC the city is working with the White House to address the city’s challenges with disparities in vaccinations. She called the stadium “the largest vaccination site in the southeast” for everyone to visit for a vaccine.
“We’re going to send people directly to the doors to make sure that people have access,” she said. “We’re also going to coordinate and make sure that there’s transportation available, etc., to get people here to get vaccinated.”
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