On Wednesday, March 10, Tanner Health System provided COVID-19 vaccines for staff from Carroll County Schools, Carrollton City Schools, Oak Mountain Academy and Oak Grove Montessori.

“Tanner Health System’s partnership has been instrumental in allowing us to offer our employees the opportunity to receive the COVID-19 vaccine promptly,” said Scott Cowart, superintendent for the Carroll County School System. “We are fortunate to have tremendous support from our community to keep our students and staff safe and healthy while also providing premier in-person instruction.”

In all, more than 1,000 school staff received their first of two doses of COVID-19 vaccine at Tabernacle Baptist Church in Carrollton.

“Our school systems are essential in our efforts to get back to normal,” said Loy Howard, president and CEO of Tanner. “Our schools do so much not only for our children, but our families in general. We’re proud to be able to offer this level of protection for our local educators. It’s our goal to vaccinate everyone in our community. As soon as we receive vaccine, we open vaccination clinics. Ultimately, we want to provide a vaccine for everyone in our community who wants one.”

Next week, the health system plans to host a vaccination event in Bremen for Bremen City Schools staff.

The vaccination effort follows Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp’s March 8 decision to expand vaccination to school staff. For about two months, Tanner has been working to provide as many vaccines as possible to healthcare workers and Georgia residents age 65 and older, in accordance with state guidelines.

“Tanner has gone above and beyond to accommodate our local school systems with a simple, no-hassle process that made the large-scale vaccination logistics easy to navigate on our end,” said Dr. Mark Albertus, superintendent for Carrollton City Schools. “It alleviated a lot of anxiety and stress on our teachers, staff and the parents who trust us to keep their children safe. This is a community partnership at its finest.”

In addition to vaccinating educators, Tanner provided first and second doses to those 65 and above. Tanner will continue to plan upcoming vaccination clinics as supply allows. The health system relies on the state to determine how much vaccine it receives.

More on Tanner’s COVID-19 vaccination efforts can be found at tanner.org/vaccine.