NAACP partners with local organizations to host Saturday vaccination clinic in Jackson

JACKSON, Miss. (WLBT) - The Mississippi Department of Health reported nearly 5,000 new COVID-19 cases between Friday and Sunday of last week alone.

This weekend, Jackson’s NAACP branch partnered with the Mississippi Department of Health, a non-profit called One Voice, and the National Council of Negro Women to try and bring those numbers down.

The organizations put on a vaccination clinic Saturday at the MW Stringer Lodge in Jackson.

“With the surging of numbers, we really were looking into trying to get this vaccination in before school started,” Jackson NAACP Health Chair Catherine Robinson said.

This comes amid another grim milestone for Mississippi. State Health Officer Dr. Thomas Dobbs tweeted Saturday morning that COVID-19 hospitalizations reached a new peak of 204 as of Friday. This surpasses the previous record number of confirmed admissions back in January.

“COVID-19 is here, and it’s not going anywhere,” Robinson said.

She said one of her main goals is to protect the young kids who are eligible for the vaccine — those 12 and older.

“With the kids going back to school and the majority of them being under the age of 12, we feel that it’s beneficial for the families to come together and take precautions to make sure that themselves, as well as their children, are safe while they’re entering the school system,” Robinson said.

One mother of four, Renata Brooks, said she lost her second family member to the virus just last weekend.

“Once it hits home, it clicks in your head — ‘Okay, yeah, it’s time to go get vaccinated,’” she said.

Brooks said she was nervous about getting her kids vaccinated at first, but she feels it is better to be safe than sorry.

“I did have to go and read a lot just to see if I wanted to decide to get them vaccinated,” she said. “Once the Delta variant came into place, then that really made me just take the chance and say, ‘okay, let me get them vaccinated.’”

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