HUNTSVILLE, Ala — "This morning we started vaccinating, the health department did get a limited supply of vaccine and I happen to know that one of the pharmacies here in town got their vaccines," said Judy Smith, Public Health Administrator with the Alabama Department of Public Health.
Vaccines are slowly becoming more available to people other than frontline health workers.
"Soon, we hope that we will be giving it to all of you who want it, we hope that we will be developing heard immunity, and getting to where we need to be," said Smith.
The term herd immunity has been thrown around a lot recently, but what does it mean?
"Herd immunity means that when there are enough people who have antibody protection, primarily by the vaccine, you know, other people won't be exposed, and a great example is, we don't have measles going on in Morgan County right now," said Smith. "And even though there are some people that are not vaccinated, which would be a tragedy if we did have an outbreak, there are enough people who are vaccinated, that it protects the rest of us."
Until the vaccine has fully rolled out to the public, Smith urges everyone to continue doing what we know needs to be done, staying distanced, masked and sanitized.
"Let's turn Morgan County back to where it needs to be, to be a safe place where we can do the things that we want to do," said Smith.
If you broke the rules in the past, there's nothing you can do, but moving forward you can work to keep yourself and your community safe.
"And I think as a group, we do wish you a Happy New Year, please, please, we can't turn back time but from here forward we can do what we need to do," said Smith.