It is not a call that anyone wants to receive, especially now.
On Friday, Beaufort Memorial Hospital called a local woman to cancel a couple of coronavirus vaccination appointments on Monday that she had scheduled for her elderly mother and mother-in-law (both live this way).
The team apologized, but there was nothing they could do. They expected delivery of 2,000 doses of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine; they received less than 500.
The woman, who asked not to be named, tried to reschedule. But the hospital said they would not be able to schedule further appointments until they were sure enough doses were coming.
And that, in a nutshell, is the problem with the launch of the South Carolina COVID-19 vaccine – which the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention declared last week the second worst in the country (behind only Alabama).
On Monday, Governor Henry McMaster threatened to use his executive powers to force hospitals to take doses off the shelves and get them into people’s arms more quickly. The feeling is correct, but it is easier said than done. Because hospitals cannot distribute what they don’t have.
The SC Department of Health and Environmental Control reports that it received more than 300,000 doses of the vaccine and, on Saturday, gave the first of the two vaccines to more than 158,000 people. And they are vaccinating thousands daily.
McMaster moved all 70s and older to the front of the queue and, last week, asked hospitals to cut down on elective and non-essential procedures so that more staff could help vaccinate people.
Good idea, and some were already doing it. MUSC even recruited retired doctors and nurses to help.
Big hospitals like MUSC and Prisma are struggling a lot right now: they’re doing a lot of state COVID testing, taking care of patients suffering from the deadly symptoms of the virus … and trying to administer a complex vaccination scheme that’s crashing servers while more and more people struggle for commitments.
It’s a logistical nightmare. What makes this more difficult is that the Pfizer vaccine is a double dose; the first has about 50% -60% effectiveness and the second places the effectiveness rate at the 90th percentile. The problem is that the two doses need to be administered about 19-23 days apart – a tight window at normal times.
And, of course, these are not normal times.
The problem is that, even when refrigerated, the vaccine has a limited shelf life. A canceled appointment means struggling to move drugs to ensure that no doses are missed. And it is difficult to schedule that first injection when there is no guarantee of vaccines available at the time of the second.
The (Columbia) state newspaper reports that the Beaufort Memorial alone had to cancel more than 6,000 appointments for that reason.
Last week, the Federal Department of Health and Human Services announced that it would release the national vaccine stock to speed up this process. But The Washington Post said there was no stock. Demand is far outstripping supply.
Of course, it couldn’t come at a worse time. COVID-19 cases are reaching record levels in South Carolina – more than 50,000 in the past two weeks. The state set a dubious record two weeks ago, with almost 7,000 new cases in a single day.
It’s that winter wave that experts predicted, and now almost 400,000 have died of COVID across the country since last March. Again, exactly as the experts predicted. Perhaps more people should start listening to them.
Today, Joe Biden will take the oath as President of the United States and set a goal to administer 100 million vaccines in 100 days. Hospital officials say this is an ambitious goal, but completely achievable if, as expected, the military and FEMA help.
This also assumes that sufficient doses are available. When Johnson & Johnson’s COVID-19 vaccine is approved for distribution, probably within a few weeks, that should help. It is a single dose vaccine and comes from a large company with great manufacturing capacity.
The result is that this is not the time to relax about social detachment and masks. Even people who got the vaccine need to maintain these habits, as they can still be asymptomatic carriers.
South Carolina is not out of danger yet, but be patient, patients. This is a complicated job, but I hope that soon everyone will receive that much needed arm injection.