Amid assurances from major medical centers in Southern California that only frontline health workers are getting the first COVID-19 vaccines, a second community hospital has apparently deviated from federal guidelines and inoculated a relative of an employee.
Officials at Southern California Hospital in Culver City, such as Redlands Community Hospital previously, acknowledge that they sought out non-hospital employees when they were faced with extra doses of Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine that would otherwise have expired. They insist, however, that the first respondents were directed to extra doses at the 420-bed facility.
Elsewhere, officials at other medical facilities across the region have indicated that they are strictly following the Centers for Disease Control’s recommendations to offer only the vaccine and extra doses found in some vials to frontline staff.
“We have really maintained the line and made sure that frontline workers are first,” said Krist Azizian, director of pharmacy for Keck Medicine at USC, which has about 9,000 employees. “We don’t offer it to family members of our team.”
Time is of the essence for the distribution of the Pfizer vaccine, which must be stored at -94 degrees Fahrenheit and administered right after thawing, or goes to waste.
Team members refuse vaccine
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.”
Soon, the hospital was overloaded by those calling for extra doses of Pfizer, forcing the institution to stop offering vaccines to relatives and instead to focus primarily on the first respondents, the woman said.
No time for new distribution plan
The woman praised Southern California Hospital for taking quick steps to ensure that vaccines are not wasted.
“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. “
Southern California Hospital denies that relatives of employees were invited to the facility to receive the Pfizer vaccine, said spokeswoman Laura M. Gilbert.
After hospital staff picked up frozen vaccines at a distribution center last week, they quickly realized that the number of doses exceeded the number of employees at the facility, she said
“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 availability vaccine, according to Gilbert. In addition, some civil servants have also been vaccinated.
“This decisive action ensured that we achieved our goal of vaccinating all frontline personnel as quickly as possible and avoided wasting valuable vaccines,” said Gilbert.
‘A reasonable explanation’
Southern California Hospital appears to have handled the situation properly, said Andrew Noymer, associate professor of public health at UC Irvine.
“It seems like a reasonable explanation,” he added. “If they actually got more vaccines than they can use, it’s not really their fault.”
However, Dr. David D. Lo, senior associate dean of research at UC Riverside School of Medicine, disagrees.
“They don’t exactly deny that the family members of the team were vaccinated, just that they were not invited,” he said. “Furthermore, it gave no indication that they had actually planned their vaccination strategy.”
In a separate incident, a 33-year-old Riverside woman recently boasted on Facebook that she was vaccinated on December 20 at Redlands Community Hospital because her husband’s aunt, who works at the facility, had some extra doses that were about to expire. .
“Science is basically my religion, so that was very important to me,” said the woman in a Facebook post.
The Redlands community said in a statement that the extra doses were administered to health professionals outside the front line so that the valuable vaccine was not thrown away.
However, the hospital did not explain how the woman, who works for Disney and apparently is not a doctor, managed to get the vaccine.
Smooth implementation for others
Many Southern California hospitals have been planning and preparing for months to distribute COVID-19 vaccines, along with overdoses.
At USC’s Keck Hospital and affiliated USC Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center, about 8,825 doses of the Pfizer vaccine are being provided to about 3,300 doctors, nurses and support staff, said Azizian. Nearly 6,000 remaining employees are waiting or in the process of scheduling vaccinations.
Keck Medicine, which has not had too many shortages, provides vaccines to about 400 frontline employees daily, said spokeswoman Cynthia Smith. About 15 percent of vaccines already delivered to Keck Medicine contained an extra dose, helping to speed up and maximize the inoculation process, said Azizian.
“We can vaccinate more individuals to achieve our goal more quickly,” he added.
Officials at UCLA Health, Long Beach Memorial Hospital and Orange Coast Medical Center in Fountain Valley also said that extra doses of Pfizer are being distributed to staff who regularly contact and treat patients with COVID-19
Loma Linda University Medical Center is using the extra doses to systematically move its developed distribution plan well before receiving vaccines, said Dr. April Wilson, an expert in preventive medicine.
“The plan prioritized those who cared for patients with COVID-19 and within that group, those most at risk for age, then moved on to progressively younger age groups,” she said. “Next, we offer the vaccine to those who were hospitalized, and then we direct patient care. The extra doses allowed us to go further on the priority list “
At UCI Medical Center, nearly 6,000 employees received vaccines through scheduled appointments or staff visits to the workplace to administer doses, said spokesman John Murray.
“This approach ensures that doses are or will be available to all UCI Health employees who desire them and that doses are offered only to those who work for our health care system,” he said. “Fortunately, the additional doses per bottle of Pfizer vaccine allowed us to further vaccinate our employees faster than we expected.”