With North Carolina initially among the slowest states for administering coronavirus vaccines, reporters are raising questions about the effectiveness of its distribution.
At a press conference on January 21, a reporter asked Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, Mandy Cohen, how many injections were misused or were thrown away.
“We, as a state, do not want to waste a vaccine. We are seeing a very small number of vaccine residues registered in our CVMS system, but they are very few, as in dozens of doses, ”replied Cohen.
The number of spoils in North Carolina is “very small”, even “in the tens?”
The state health department says that, on average, it is receiving reports of less than 10 spoiled doses per provider. However, the total number of spoiled doses is in the four digits, not two.
The day after Cohen’s briefing, the North Carolina health department told the Associated Press that a total of 1,280 doses were dropped.
About the discrepancy
We asked the department about the comments Cohen made on Thursday. Was she describing the number 1,280? Had she seen that specific number of 1,280?
Chris Mackey, the department’s communications director, said no.
Cohen had not seen the specific total when he spoke at that January 21 meeting, said Mackey, because the department did not report on the numbers until later. Cohen based his comments on “one-off conversations” with other health officials.
“We made a report when someone asked us to. Mandy didn’t have the number, ”said Mackey in a telephone interview. “She was trying to say that we didn’t see any major incident with vaccine residues.”
The 1,280 spoiled doses account for 0.1% of the 1.1 million doses in the state, the department said by email.
There are 250 healthcare providers administering the injections, the e-mail said, which means that losses amount to about five doses per provider.
Comparing states
It is difficult to know how North Carolina’s numbers compare to those of other states.
The CDC instructed states to report vaccine waste in their tracking system, agency spokeswoman Kristen Nordlund told PolitiFact. However, reporters from ProPublica found that some states are not tracking their spoiled doses.
“We are working to find out how to provide this data online in the future, when the data is more complete,” said Nordlund.
A 2019 report from the World Health Organization states that vaccine waste should be between 5% and 20% during mass vaccination campaigns.
There are reports of other states missing hundreds of doses in single incidents.
Wisconsin received national attention when authorities accused a local pharmacist of deliberately destroying about 500 doses of the vaccine.
In Massachusetts, NBC News reported that a Veterans Affairs hospital missed 1,900 doses after a cleaning company accidentally turned off a refrigerator. In Ohio, the Columbus Dispatch reported that a drug store has broken 890 doses by not keeping them properly stored. In another case, almost 12,000 doses went bad on the way to Michigan, after the transport truck got too cold.
Our decision
Cohen said the health department is receiving reports of “a very small number of vaccine residues … but very few, like dozens of doses”. The health department clarified Cohen’s remarks a day later.
It is fair to say that the rate of deterioration of the vaccine is “very small” – a tenth of 1%. However, it was inaccurate for Cohen to say that the number was “in the tens”. The total number was 1,280.
We classify this statement as a true medium.