Alabama’s effort to expand COVID-19 vaccinations enters a new phase on March 22nd. That’s when the State will add 2,000,000 more resident eligible for a shot. The revised list will include more frontline workers, people 55 and older, those with developmental disabilities, and residents aged 16 to 64 with certain high-risk medical conditions. The qualifying medical conditions include cancer, chronic kidney disease, diabetes, smoking, obesity, sickle cell disease and heart conditions.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is also working to find why Alabamians appear especially hesitant to be vaccinated. APR Gulf coast correspondent Guy Busby explored that issue in minority communities in the Mobile area. Dr. Errol Crook is chairman of the Department of Internal Medicine at the University of South Alabama. He helped author a study on the subject.
Professor Errol Crook: COVID’s unequal impacts create ‘sense of urgency’
Updated Mar 08, 2021;
Posted Mar 08, 2021
Dr. Errol Crook, chair of Internal Medicine, USA College of Medicine, clinical nephrologist, USA Physicians Group.Bill Starling/USA Health
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“Our social life with friends and family is completely virtual,” said Errol Crook, the Abraham A. Mitchell Professor and chair of internal medicine at the University of South Alabama College of Medicine.
No kidding: Crook said that at one point in 2020 he had to make arrangements to isolate from the rest of his family, because he was seeing patients while his daughters had to return back home from graduate and undergraduate school. He and his wife also have struggled to maintain relationships with parents in skilled nursing facilities.