City Leaders Speak With GMA Group On Vaccines, Regeneron

The City of Dalton has been active in the fight against COVID-19, staging drive-thru vaccination events since March and now also giving monoclonal antibody treatments to people who have COVID-19 infections. The city's efforts have attracted attention around the state of Georgia, and on Tuesday morning, city leaders gave a presentation on the two projects via video conference to the Georgia Municipal Association's (GMA) weekly Cities Connect call. 

City Councilmember Annalee Harlan gave an in-depth presentation on both the vaccine effort and the Regeneron REGEN-COV monoclonal antibody treatments, which the city has been offering at a drive-thru clinic at the Dalton Convention Center since August 27th. Harlan, who has been instrumental in leading the city's response to COVID-19 thanks to her medical background, focused on the steps the city had to take to become authorized to perform both the vaccinations and the Regeneron treatments, and covered the logistics of how the city is making it work. City Administrator Andrew Parker and Fire Chief Todd Pangle, whose firefighters helped to organize the vaccination clinics earlier in the year and who is now involved in planning the Regeneron site, covered some of the different challenges that city leaders have faced along the way. 

The Dalton Convention Center site was averaging between 900 and 1,200 vaccinations per day in March when it was first set up, and it has performed more than 12,000 vaccinations in the months since March when the City of Dalton took it over as the administrator. The Regeneron clinics have been met with similar success, crossing the 1,000 patient threshold within the first couple of weeks of treatments. 

Councilmember Harlan emphasized that Regeneron is a valuable tool in the fight against COVID-19, but that it is not a replacement for vaccination which remains critically important to getting the pandemic under control. That sentiment was echoed by other GMA leaders who noted that there have been some encouraging statistics over the past weeks that indicate the most recent surge in cases may be leveling off in Georgia. In order to keep that trend going, it's important for more Georgians to get vaccinated. 

Dalton leaders hope that by helping other cities around the state to set up similar treatment clinics in the future, all of us can get back to a more normal, pre-pandemic way of life soon.