ELBERTON, Georgia – A small town in Georgia was still in shock on Friday, days after state health officials raided the county’s busiest medical clinic and seized its Covid-19 vaccine supply because employees gave doses to teachers .
About 470 injections of the Pfizer vaccine were confiscated from the Elberton Medical Center, a private clinic that had been the largest vaccine supplier in Elbert County, leaving behind only enough medicine to guarantee a second dose to people who had already been vaccinated. .
“Everything we’ve tried to do to date to vaccinate our county has been thrown away,” Dr. Jonathan Poon, who works at the clinic, told NBC News.
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In addition, George’s Department of Public Health said it will no longer provide vaccines to the medical center for the next six months, until July 27.
“DPH took action after learning that the provider was vaccinating individuals in the Elbert County School District who were outside the current eligible Phase 1A + population,” the agency said in a statement.
But in a January 29 letter to the center, the department gave no warning that it would confiscate the remaining shots on Tuesday.
“Leaving the stages disrupts the allocation process and creates the possibility that many elderly citizens will not receive vaccination in a timely manner,” said the department. “After signing up for the Georgia COVID Vaccine Program, you signed a COVID Vaccination Provider Agreement that stated that you and your practice would not violate any state or federal rules related to the program.”
In an interview, Dr. Chris Rustin, from the Department of Public Health, said the clinic’s actions left them no choice.
“Leaving the phase almost deliberately was something we couldn’t ignore,” he said. “And we needed to make sure that other people who are vaccinating understand that we have such limitations in our vaccine supply that we have to follow a plan that has been clearly communicated.”
Still, as of December 7, educators were considered by the state to be “that essential group,” said Poon, adding that they were able to vaccinate about 177 school officials before the public health department closed them.
“We feel, you know, with the guidance of the state, that teachers were part of that group,” he said. “So, as soon as we were able to move to vaccinate essential workers, that’s what we did.”
The first indication that they could have come into conflict with the state was on January 26, when the department called “asking whether or not we had vaccinated teachers or not,” said the doctor.
“And at the time we, of course, believed it was part of the proper procedure, so we said yes,” said Poon. “And in less than 48 hours, the state issued a decision that our vaccine status was suspended and that we would no longer be able to vaccinate individuals.”
The reaction of the community? “Shock,” he said.
Terrie Glaude, a teacher from Elbert County, was able to give her second injection a few days before the department went to the clinic. “I was very lucky to not have to worry about that,” she said.
She said she was surprised by the news of the operation and did not agree “with the state’s order that teachers should not have participated in the first wave of vaccinations”.
“Everyone wants their children at school,” said Glaude. “And the way to keep them in school is to let our teachers be vaccinated with the elderly population and then come down, you know, as is appropriate.”
Marlene Lord, who is 68 and received her second dose at the clinic on Thursday, said she would have gladly given her vaccination to a teacher.
“Because I am retired, I have the ability to stay away from it more than they do,” she said. “I want children at school. And I think the more protection there is, the better.”
Lord also said the public health department did a poor job of serving the community by getting vaccines out of the clinic.
“If something was done wrong, you know, it should have just been corrected,” she said. “People here don’t want to do anything wrong. They have the community’s best interest in mind. You know?”
Because of the vaccine shortage, public health agencies and providers often have to make difficult choices, Jennifer Kates, a public policy expert at the Kaiser Family Foundation, told NBC News.
“It’s almost like a ‘Sofia’s Choice’ having to choose between someone who is older than we know, if infected with coronavirus, is much more likely to get sick and even die, or someone who is a frontline employee of that we need in society, “she said.
DPH spokeswoman Nancy Nydam said she warned the clinic 30 minutes in advance on Tuesday, saying they would come to collect the vaccines.
The weekly newspaper Elberton Star was going to press that afternoon when editor Gary Jones learned of the invasion.
“When I arrived, five unidentified people were in and around the room where TMCE keeps its precious Pfizer vaccines,” wrote Jones on the newspaper’s website. “When I entered the area, with my press badge prominently displayed, I approached two men who were part of the group of five and asked their names. They refused to answer.”
Jones said he observed two people removing vaccines from the clinic’s freezer and reporting that a woman whose identity badge bears the name Leah Hoffacker confirmed that they were there “by DPH authority”.
Hoffacker, according to his LinkedIn profile, is a medical countermeasures program manager in the public health department and her job is to dispense vaccines and medications during public health emergencies. All state health professionals involved in the operation are members of the department’s vaccination distribution team, Nydam said.
While investigators in the department secured the vaccines, Jones wrote, the medical center office manager, Brooke McDowell, videotaped what was happening.
“Shortly after I arrived, Hoffacker asked McDowell to sign a document stating that TMCE was ‘voluntarily’ allowing this party to remove vaccines from the deep-frozen freezer,” wrote Jones. “McDowell refused to sign the document.”
Jones said he asked public health officials if they had a warrant or court order and that the clinic staff were “crying” and “begging” them not to get the vaccines.
Department officials at that point appeared to reconsider removing vaccines, Jones wrote. But after returning to the newspaper to oversee the publication of the new issue, Jones said he was informed that department officials had removed vaccines from the facility.
Jones told NBC News that he is filing a request to open records with the state to identify other department employees who “were mistreated at the clinic”.
The Elberton Medical Center filed an appeal to lift the suspension, alleging that it did not intentionally violate any rule or regulation and blamed the error on “lack of clarification on the part of the state,” reported the NBC affiliate.
The confiscated vaccines were redistributed to five other providers in rural Elbert County, on the border with South Carolina, along with 2,100 additional doses, the public health department said.
One is Madden’s Pharmacy in the town of Elberton, where owner Don Piela told the local NBC News affiliate that they were vaccinating around 50 people a day and that confiscating doses from the clinic made no sense.
“For me, this is a problem,” he said. “It’s kind of like, why would you take the fire trucks out of the fire station and put them somewhere else?”
The other recipients of the confiscated vaccines are the Elbert County Health Department, Elbert Memorial Hospital, MedLink and a local English grocery store.
The GPH said, through Nydam, that it maintains its decision to suspend the Elberton Medical Center and is confident that Elbert County residents have and will continue to have more than enough local access to the vaccine.
According to Georgia guidelines, teachers are not eligible for the vaccine, unless they are also health professionals, first responders or 65 years or older.
But the Elberton Medical Center began vaccinating school staff last month, after administering doses to high-priority workers, “but before completing vaccination for the elderly,” reported the Atlanta Journal-Constitution in January.
“We are not going to leave it on the shelf to spoil,” McDowell told the newspaper last month. “The governor asked us to shoot and that is what we are doing.”
County schools were opened because many of the approximately 3,000 children enrolled in the district have no internet service, which would allow for virtual learning, and also rely on schools for food, Dr. J. Daniel McAvoy clinic told the newspaper.
“So we saw how very important it was to vaccinate our school teachers, and we went out and did that,” said McAvoy. “And then we saw the guidance later.”
Deputy Andrew Clyde, the newly elected Republican who represents the county, declined to comment on the vaccine’s confiscation, said his spokesman, Russell Read.
The Covid-19 vaccination is already being provided to teachers from kindergarten to high school in 25 states and Washington, DC, although in some of these states it is limited to selected counties, according to a New York Times survey of childcare rules. eligibility for vaccination.
In a separate NBC News survey, teachers are eligible for a Covid-19 vaccination in 22 different states.
Georgia, however, is not one of those states on either list.
Sitting in a building near the clinic that employees had turned into a vaccination center, Poon examined an empty waiting room that, in the days before the operation, had a steady but socially distant flow of patients showing up for his appointments.
“It’s heartbreaking,” said the doctor. “We put everything in the last few months to try to make this a success.”
In the beginning, Poon said, they invested $ 7,000 out of their own pockets in an expensive freezer, capable of storing vaccines, because they wanted to be part of the solution to the pandemic.
“We were humble,” he said. “We didn’t expect a pat on the back. We thought that was part of the plan.”
Gosk reported from Elberton, Georgia, Strickler from Washington DC, Cavazuti from New York City and Siemaszko from Montclair, New Jersey.