Alison Cundiff’s heartbeat quickened as she handed the man her driver’s license.The Gwinnett County middle school teacher had driven nearly three hours for her appointment at this Tennessee COVID-19 vaccination site, and she worried that he would see the word “Georgia” on her license and send her home without a shot. Moments later, though, that tension gave way to relief.
“They did not care at all,” Cundiff said.
She is among an untold number of Georgia teachers who said they were frustrated by the wait for their turn here and have crossed state lines in search of a vaccine. In Cundiff’s case, that was at a Tennessee Department of Health vaccination site at a church in Cleveland, a town north of Chattanooga. The Georgians making these trips see vaccinations as essential to safety in their schools. Health leaders in the destination states say the traveling teachers are taking vaccines away from their residents, but they haven’t prohibited the activity.
Georgia is not reciprocating. Under recently published state rules, vaccine providers in the state could temporarily lose access to doses if they knowingly vaccinate someone who neither works nor lives here.
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