Ramping up Vaccinations

At 11.

17 percent of hamilton county residents have had a covid shot.

9 percent are fully vaccinated and the health department is working to multiply that number.

News 12's dorothy sherman shows us how they are ramping up vaccination efforts like never before in tonight's, top local story.

Saturday will be the last day of free covid testing at the alstom site in hamilton county.

Health administrator becky barnes: "we plan to make alstom our fourth vaccination site for the community and stopping testing will let us use all of our staffing resources to vaccination efforts."

Testing has been going on for nearly a year.

In that time, the health department has administered more than 150,000 tests.

While testing is stopping at alstom, that doesn't mean getting swabbed is any less important.

Health administrator becky barnes: "we still want to emphasize that we need everyone to be tested that has symptoms or that has had a high risk exposure."

Free testing will continue at these places: cempa's drive-thru at alleo health, lifespring's drive-thru and the clinica medicos drive-thru.

Hamilton county mayor jim coppinger: "we're very fortunate that were getting more vaccine and as we said from day one if we had more vaccine we'd be putting more shots in the arms and we're doing so."

As the county is getting more vaccines, positive cases, hospitalizations and icu numbers are all down.

Hamilton county mayor jim coppinger "we know that we're getting really close to being able to get some type of normalcy back and that's why these vaccinations are so important."

The mayor is asking that if you have the qualifications to give vaccinations and want to volunteer, contact the health department.

He says it takes about 60 people to run each site.

In hamilton county, dorothy sherman,