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Mass vaccination clinics could come to Georgia as early as next week, and according to state health commissioner Dr. Kathleen Toomey, will be vaccinating up to 5,000 people a day. Health officials are expanding access to COVID-19 vaccines after announcing that many doses in rural counties are sitting in freezers, while demand in the metro area continues to climb. A Georgia Department of Public Health spokesperson says they don't have all the logistics worked out yet, however. 

Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp said Monday that vaccine distribution has been "a little slower rolling out than everyone initially thought." On Tuesday morning, less than 15% of available shipped vaccines had been administered. A total of 295,375 vaccines (including Pfizer and Moderna) had been shipped to Georgia but only 43,469 had been administered. Tuesday afternoon, those numbers slightly increased with a total of 372,900 vaccines shipped to Georgia and 52,242 administered. "It's well documented that it has been a little slower," said Governor Kemp in an interview with 11Alive. "That's understandable."

The US continues to struggle with insufficient COVID-19 testing capacity. At the same time, US laboratories use ultrasensitive diagnostic criteria in their tests, leading to a large proportion of positive diagnoses associated with negligible viral loads. This column seeks to construct a theory that explains both undertesting and overdiagnosis. The theory predicts both phenomena may arise in the absence of mandatory viral load reporting. Despite the obvious clinical advantages of viral load reporting, mandating such reporting may not be optimal when considering laboratories’ capacity building decisions and potential benefits of widespread quarantining. 

Claps, whoops and cheers erupted outside the Franklin Woods Center in Rossville on Wednesday after three staffers and two residents volunteered to get vaccinated during a brief news conference attended by Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan. The five participants were the first among the state’s nursing home community to get vaccinated. “Yeah, man, perfect!” yipped Brian Klausmeyer, the center’s executive director, after he got his shot. ”That was it?” laughed Davenia Kemp, Franklin Woods’ geriatric nurse assistant, after the needle went in. She’d kept herself up all night, anticipating pain, discomfort or worse.

Will you get a text from your doctor? Will you read about it online? Or will you have to check the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website to know when it's your turn in line? As COVID-19 vaccines roll out to limited groups of people across the United States, how people learn they are eligible to get their shots won't be as clear while supplies remain limited, according to public health and policy experts and state vaccination plans. "I think it's going to be a little bit murky," said Katie Greene, a visiting policy associate at the Duke-Margolis Center for Health Policy.