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“People are supposed to have common sense. But it’s time to start blaming unvaccinated people, not ordinary people. It’s the unvaccinated people who let us down,” Ivey told reporters in Birmingham.
Alabama is the least vaccinated state in the country, with about 33.9% of residents fully vaccinated, according to data from the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Alabama’s average daily Covid-19 cases are almost double what they were a week ago, and more than four times more than two weeks ago.
Asked by reporters on Thursday about plans to issue a mask warrant or other restrictions now that Covid cases start to rise again in her state, Ivey replied: “The new Covid cases are due to unvaccinated people . Almost 100% of new hospitalizations are with unvaccinated people. And deaths certainly occur with unvaccinated people. ”
The unvaccinated, said Ivey, “choose a horrible lifestyle of self-inflicted pain.”
“We have to get people to shoot,” she continued, calling the vaccine “the best weapon we have to fight Covid.”
Alabama received billions in federal relief funds from the stimulus package passed by Congress and signed by President Joe Biden earlier this year. The state has offered a few small incentives to get the shot, including offering two tours around the Talladega Superspeedway in May. But unlike other states, Alabama has not used federal aid money for an incentive program, scholarships or lotteries, AL.com reported. Earlier this month, Ivey said there was no need for an incentive plan for vaccinations.
On Thursday, Ivey insisted she had done “everything I can do” to handle the situation. When asked what it would take to get more people to get vaccinated, she replied, “I don’t know, you tell me.”
Ivey ended the state’s mask tenure in April, at the time prioritizing personal responsibility over a government tenure. The CDC announced in May that fully vaccinated people would no longer have to wear masks.
But now, with the Delta variant spreading, experts say both vaccinated and unvaccinated people should wear masks in areas where Covid-19 cases are high but vaccination rates are low.
On Thursday, a reporter asked Ivey what it would take to implement a mask warrant and replied “I want people to get vaccinated” and “why would we bother with just temporary stuff?”
The governor said she received both doses of the Covid vaccine in December.
“Sure, it’s effective, the data proves it works, it doesn’t cost anything. It saves lives,” she said.
When asked if she would recommend that children too young to be vaccinated wear a mask when they return to school, Ivey said the decision would be left to school districts.
In recent days – amid flare-ups mostly occurring in states former President Donald Trump won in 2020 – a growing number of Republicans and conservative media figures have called on Americans to get vaccinated after months of refusal to support the question. But many Republican leaders still won’t say publicly if they’re vaccinated, and Trump himself has pitched the vaccine in political terms, suggesting people don’t take it because “they don’t trust the administration ( of Biden) “.
CNN’s Cara Lynn Clarkson, Madeline Holcombe, Tina Burnside and Jason Hanna contributed to this report.
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