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This past weekend, Mizell Memorial Hospital partnered with all of the schools in the county to administer the COVID-19 vaccine to their faculty and staff.

Covington County School’s superintendent Shannon Driver said more than 100 of his staff showed up to the clinic to get vaccinated.

“We were very appreciative that we were able to go ahead and get the vaccine,” Driver said. “We knew that we had been cleared by the Department of Public Health to get it, so it was just a matter of finding somebody who would give it to the teachers. Mizell had offered to set up a clinic for us and we were able to get a good number of ours employees vaccinated. I think it went really well and we will follow up in four weeks for a second dose of the vaccine.”

Driver said he believes the vaccine will help stop the spread at his schools.

“With the vaccine, we will hopefully stop the spread and we won’t have to quarantine,” Driver said. “It has been difficult covering classes. We have had a pretty steady stream of teachers who have gotten the virus, so hopefully, this will slow it down and we can have everybody work more consistently.”

Andalusia City School’s superintendent Ted Watson said there was good participation with his teachers at the clinic, as well as people who were vaccinated before.

“We had about 30 take advantage earlier before the clinic was held,” Watson said.

As far as COVID-19 is concerned, Watson said the students have not been spreading the virus as much as the teachers.

“The students have not had it at the rate that our teachers have had it,” Watson said. “We have been very fortunate so that it is spread out enough so that we are able to have school. Herd immunity has been something that as a society we have been trying to obtain, and the only way we are going to get on top of this is a vaccinated population so that we are not infected by every time that our antibodies wear out. We are just trying to get as adapted to this COVID-19 virus as we can and this vaccine helps us do that.”