ROGERS, Arkansas — Starting Monday (Jan. 18) if you are 70 or older or a teacher you will be able to get the COVID-19 vaccine.
This comes after Governor Asa Hutchinson announced earlier this week that it was time to move into phase 1-B of the vaccination plan in the state.
Like most pharmacies on the list to give the COVID-19 vaccine, Debbie’s Family Pharmacy in Rogers has been receiving a lot of calls about the vaccine.
“Right now, we are getting roughly 200 doses per week but we have over 5,000 people on our waiting list currently,” owner Andrew Mize said.
Mize says people wanting to get the vaccine can sign up on their website or call. He asks for people’s patience and they will call people to schedule appointments.
“Right now, there are just a handful of pharmacies in Benton County and over 50,000 people that meet the 1-B criteria, so it’s just going to take time to work through those. Like I said it’s a marathon, not a sprint,” he said.
In Alma at Coleman Pharmacy, owner Justin Boyd says they have also started calling people on their waiting list to schedule appointments for next week. He says right now they don’t know exactly how much of the vaccine they will be receiving next week.
“It’s not fair to schedule you for something that we don’t have or we’re not sure of. We won’t be scheduling anybody more than what we currently have in supply or when we have received confirmation about when our next supply will be,” Boyd said.
At Medical Arts Pharmacy in Fayetteville, they already have 3,000 people on their list who are either 70 and older or teachers who will start getting vaccinated next week.
Lee Smith says they have called the people on the list to schedule appointments and she thinks it will take until March to get give those 3,000 doses.
“We’ve had phones ringing off the hook and our staff has responded fabulously," she said. "We have had to hire a few extra people and we’ve had to gather volunteers to not only help us with the phone load that we are experiencing in the pharmacy but also with our covid vaccination clinics."
The Arkansas Department of Health has a list and map of all the pharmacies that will be offering the vaccine in phase 1-B.