Seniors and staff in Georgia’s nursing homes are set to start receiving vaccines next week, Gov. Brian Kemp and other officials have said.

Elderly-care facility residents, who have been among the hardest hit since the pandemic sparked in March, should start receiving doses Monday of the vaccine developed by the pharmaceutical company Moderna, the second vaccine to roll out so far in Georgia.

Pfizer said Wednesday it will supply the U.S. government with an additional 100 million doses of its COVID-19 vaccine under a new agreement between the pharmaceutical giant and the Trump administration.

Pfizer and its partner BioNTech said that will bring their total current commitment to 200 million doses for the U.S. That should be enough to vaccinate 100 million people with the two-shot regimen. The government also has an option to purchase an additional 400 million doses.

“This new federal purchase can give Americans even more confidence that we will have enough supply to vaccinate every American who wants it by June 2021,” said Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar in a statement. The cost to taxpayers: $1.95 billion for the additional 100 million doses.

The vaccine boost comes as Georgia continues to see a spike in positive COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations during the winter holiday season.

The number of COVID-19 patients being treated in Floyd County hospitals continue to rise rapidly, hitting a new high on Wednesday, according to Floyd County Emergency Management Agency reports.

Floyd Medical Center is treating 77 patients with COVID-19 and Redmond Regional Center is treating 70 patients with the disease. The number of hospitalizations has risen post-Thanksgiving and has continued upward as Christmas approached.

The worsening winter outbreak has prompted officials to open 60 intensive-care beds at the Georgia World Congress Center starting next week in preparation for peaking capacity at local hospitals, Kemp said. He urged Georgians to take caution this week as families and friends gather for the holidays.

State officials expect to receive 174,000 doses of the Moderna vaccine in the initial distribution phase, adding to the roughly 125,000 doses Georgia has received so far of the vaccine developed by pharmaceutical company Pfizer.

Workers at local hospitals and health departments in Georgia have been first in line to be vaccinated following federal approval of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines this month. Officials are pushing to vaccinate all the state’s health-care workers by sometime in January.

About 20,000 doses of the Moderna vaccine should be in Monday’s shipment to elderly-care facility residents and staff. The Moderna vaccine can be stored at less-cold temperatures than the Pfizer vaccine.

With vaccines rolling out now for hospitals and elderly-care facilities, Toomey said she anticipates workers in critical jobs like Georgia’s school teachers should start receiving the vaccine in February.

“With now the Moderna vaccine, we can literally cover the state in vaccinations,” Toomey said.

Ahead of the wider rollout, officials and health experts are urging Georgians to trust in the vaccine’s safety and to get vaccinated as soon as they can to better halt COVID-19’s spread.

More than 520,000 people in Georgia have tested positive for COVID-19 so far. As of Wednesday, the virus had killed 9,554 Georgians.

NWGN