Some California hospitals are violating federal guidelines on vaccine distribution by inoculating relatives of employees who are not first-rate health care providers or first responders.
Hospitals say many employees who can be vaccinated are refusing the opportunity, leaving dozens of doses of the vaccine thawed and spoiling. Instead of wasting the vaccine, the hospital allowed some employees to look for their families for inoculation.
Hospitals insist that the first respondents were selected for the vaccine before any worker ‘s relative was inoculated.
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A former national emergency management leader, who asked not to be named, said this week that, just before Christmas, a relative who works at Southern California Hospital invited family members to receive Pfizer vaccines there.
The woman provided Southern California News Group with text messages from the hospital showing her consultation and subsequent vaccination. She is due to return to the hospital in January to receive a second dose of the vaccine.
“The hospital planned to vaccinate all of its employees, but a large number of its employees refused and they were taking several thawed vaccines,” said the woman, explaining what the hospital staff told her. “They offered police, firefighters and first responders to be vaccinated and also told employees that they could invite four relatives.”
Not surprisingly, the news spread and the hospital was flooded with calls for the vaccine, prompting the facility to try to inoculate police and firefighters instead of relatives and friends.
“Faced with thawed and expiring vaccines that cannot be refrozen and no contingency plan, doctors decided to vaccinate people who could,” she said. “This is what doctors do, they save lives. This is what happens in disasters. Situations are constantly changing and people need to make command decisions to save as many lives as possible within their current capacity. Hospitals are overwhelmed with saving lives and have no time to stop and create a new vaccine distribution plan for a small amount of vaccine that is about to expire. “
Part of the problem seems to be poor planning by at least one hospital. They apparently asked for too much vaccine to inoculate their employees, which left a considerable number of doses.
“The surplus could not be returned to the distribution center,” she said by email. “The instructions provided with the vaccine indicated that the vaccine has a shelf life of five days when removed from the approved freezer. The distribution center indicated that the vaccine should not be stored in dry ice or transport freezers. The whole vaccine had to be used in five days or it would go to waste ”.
After inoculating all hospital staff who requested the vaccine, the team contacted the doctors who serve patients at the facility, as well as local first aid, including police, fire and emergency medical technicians to inform them of the vaccine availability, according to Gilbert. In addition, some civil servants have also been vaccinated.
I suppose we should expect that kind of confusion, especially at the beginning. Still, it is worrying that hospitals have been unable to find enough police and firefighters who wanted to be vaccinated. It makes us think that they really didn’t try hard enough.
Whoever doesn’t want to get vaccinated is his choice. Frankly, this leaves more vaccines for those who want to be inoculated, which means they will receive the dose sooner.