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Hundreds of seniors in Tennessee were prevented from receiving the COVID-19 vaccine after waiting hours to receive it on New Year’s Eve.
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They were told to return home due to a lack of supplies, according to the local news agency WRCB-TV.
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But after the elderly people left, health officials called their friends and family and gave them the vaccine.
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Hundreds of seniors in Tennessee, who waited hours to receive a coronavirus vaccine on New Year’s Eve, were told to return home due to a lack of supplies.
But as soon as they left, health officials called and administered the vaccine to their friends and close contacts, according to WRCB-TV, an affiliate of NBC.
The staff at the Tennessee Riverpark vaccination center told their friends and relatives that vaccines were still available, even after people over 75 were rejected and said otherwise, WRCB-TV reported.
The Hamilton County Department of Health has sent out a public service announcement Twitter telling people “please leave the line NOW and come back at another time.”
“Check back later today. Many more opportunities will open soon,” said the tweet.
WRCB-TV spoke with friends and relatives of several vaccine administrators.
“We have contacts,” one person told reporters at WRCB-TV when asked how he and others in his car managed to get a coronavirus vaccine.
Hamilton County Mayor Jim Coppinger attributed this to a “miscalculation”. Authorities did not know how many doses they could take from a single bottle, WRCB-TV reported.
“At the end of the day, we had more doses of vaccine than we had anticipated,” Hamilton County Health Department administrator Becky Barnes told WRCB-TV. “Because they were defrosted and prepared, they had to be administered at the end of the day. Our intention is to never miss a dose and we don’t miss any Thursday.”
“Nurses were able to withdraw 6 and occasionally 7 doses of some vials instead of the projected 5,” said Barnes. “This was our first day of using the Pfizer vaccine and the team had no history of designing the actual doses we would have.”
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention specify that the first phase of administration of the COVID-19 vaccine is for frontline employees responding to the pandemic, as well as people aged 75 and over.
It is unclear whether friends and close contacts who received the vaccine complied with these guidelines.
One couple told WRCB-TV that they waited five hours with a 94-year-old to receive the vaccine. In the middle of the five-hour wait, they had to replace the 94-year-old woman’s oxygen supply. They were finally rejected.
Read the full WRCB-TV report here.
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