Helpful information about the COVID-19 Vaccine.
CHI Memorial is in the process of administering COVID-19 vaccine to our front-line health care employees. At this time, we do not have COVID-19 vaccines for the public and do not have an estimated timeframe for our ability to provide vaccines.
Additional information will be provided here when it becomes available.
Beginning Monday, January 25, 2021, the Walker County COVID-19 Vaccine Hotline will be available 8 a.m. - 5 p.m., Monday - Friday. Call (706) 670-1234.
At CHI Memorial and CommonSpirit Health, safety is our priority, and we only administer vaccines that are recommended by the FDA as safe and effective.
Initial supply of COVID-19 vaccines are limited, and federal guidelines indicate that health care workers should be among the first to get the vaccine in order to ensure health systems are able to continue to provide care through the pandemic and beyond. Additionally, first responders and employees and patients in long-term care centers and other similar facilities will also likely receive the vaccines first.
We expect that vaccines may be widely available by spring or summer 2021.
Initially, a limited number of provider sites will be available to administer the vaccine. On December 31, 2020, the Hamilton County Health Department began offering vaccine for those age 75 plus. For updates on the Hamilton County Health Department vaccination program, visit health.hamiltontn.org. Vaccination information for Tennessee can be found on the Tennessee Department of Health website. Georgia's vaccine hot line is 1.800.357.0169.
As soon as we have information regarding the availability of the vaccine for the general public, we will post it on this website.
The Pfizer and Moderna vaccines require two doses, administered three or four weeks apart. When a vaccine is given, information will be provided about when to get the second dose.
For additional information on the COVID-19 and the vaccine approval process, we recommend reviewing the FAQs on the CDC website and FDA website.
Normally vaccines can take years to develop as drugs make their way through development, clinical trials, FDA approval, and then manufacturing. Due to the public health crisis numerous companies and governments worked together to develop and isolate vaccine targets which shortened the development phase. Additionally, due to government funding the manufacturing process has been ongoing in hopes that these vaccines would prove effective. In normal situations this would be huge financial risk and would not happen, but due to government funding this “risk” was undertaken in hopes of these vaccines being effective and immediately released to the market. This is the primary reason why the vaccines will reach patients much quicker that under normal circumstances.
Yes! The data from both Pfizer and Moderna have resulted in 94-95% efficacy.
No, the vaccines will cause your own cells to make a protein (spike protein) that will then be recognized by your immune system to mount an immune response and provide immunity to COVID-19.
Yes. At this time it is unknown if previous COVID-19 infection will offer comparable immunity as has been demonstrated with the vaccines. You may get the vaccine if you are not actively sick with a severe illness and fever.
At this time we don’t know. However, the vaccines target the “spike protein” of the coronavirus so we expect that unless a significant mutation occurs, we are hopeful for long-term immunity but we simply do not know at this time.
The data suggests that the vaccines are well tolerated with the most common side effects being injection site pain, fatigue, headache, myalgia, and less commonly fever/chills. It appears that the incidence of these mild side effects are more common than we normally observe for flu vaccines, but these are typically limited to 12-24 hour duration..
The vaccine is administered as an intramuscular injection in the deltoid muscle. The vaccine will be thawed and diluted with room temperature diluent prior to administration.
The vaccines have not been studied in pregnancy and they will not be indicated for this population.
If you have any additional questions, please email COVID@memorial.org. Answers to your questions will be posted on this page.