Hamilton County Health Department to expand COVID vaccination efforts and end testing

“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,” Health Administrator Becky Barnes said.

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.

“We still want to emphasize that we need everyone to be tested that has symptoms or that has had a high risk exposure,” Barnes said.

Free testing will continue at Cempa’s drive-thru at Alleo Health, Lifespring’s drive-thru and at the Clinica Medicos drive-thru

“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,” Hamilton County Mayor Jim Coppinger said.

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

“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,” Mayor Coppinger said.

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

He said that it takes about 60 people to run each site.

There are other places giving vaccinations besides the health department including Walmart.