(TNS) – North Carolina residents know exactly which hospitals will receive the first doses of the state’s initial coronavirus vaccine supply.
NC officials released on Thursday a list of 53 medical centers and health systems that will soon receive shipments of the COVID-19 vaccine from Pfizer and BioNTech, which federal regulators must approve for emergency use this weekend.
This same level of disclosure is absent only in the south. The South Carolina public health agency declined to name 15 vaccine sites with deep-frozen freezers that will receive doses as early as next week, citing safety concerns.
The SC Department of Health and Environmental Control on Thursday also denied a request for public records made by The Island Packet and Beaufort Gazette looking for a list of suppliers enrolled in the South Carolina vaccine distribution network. DHEC said the records contained confidential proprietary information, among other things. “I don’t know of any state so far that has released the names of the places where these vaccines go in their limited supply,” Stephen White, director of immunizations at DHEC, told reporters in early December.
Several southern states have yet to publish the location of their suppliers. And experts emphasize that the safety of the vaccine should not be taken lightly. An IBM team has already discovered a large-scale phishing campaign against a global COVID-19 cold chain.
But some states like North Carolina, Kentucky and Texas have recently named hospitals that will receive the initial COVID-19 vaccines. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, in a November 28 tweet, detailed which healthcare systems in his state would receive the first shipments from Pfizer.
Washington, DC also released on Thursday a list of medical centers that will soon have the vaccine in hand, which will be the first available in the United States.
These ads gave residents a glimpse of how their states are helping to choose which doctors and nurses can be vaccinated immediately against the deadly pathogen.
“Not everyone could be in this first group,” Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear said during a news conference on December 3, explaining his state’s decision. “The initial allocation sites were chosen because they were large enough to handle the pallet or minimum size of the Pfizer vaccine shipped, which is 975 (doses).”
So when, exactly, will the people of South Carolina know who, in their state’s health workforce, is likely to receive vaccines next week?
It is not yet clear.
“At this time, South Carolina considers the provision of specific locations of limited quantities of vaccine a safety risk, with respect to the possibility of theft or disruption of the state’s fair and equitable vaccine distribution plan,” wrote the door DHEC spokesperson Laura Renwick in a statement on Friday. “It is clear that information about vaccine locations and suppliers will be widely available as vaccine production increases and the vaccine becomes available to everyone.”
Inside the State Plan
Here’s what we know: Pfizer’s vaccine supply, BNT162b2, will be extremely limited in principle. And South Carolina is planning to prioritize its distribution initially among critical health professionals and residents and long-term employees.
The general public is out of luck, for now. Vaccines will not be widely available until 2021.
The state expects to receive 200,000 to 300,000 doses of COVID-19 vaccines by the end of 2020, including from Pfizer and the modern biotechnology company, which is also seeking federal approval for its candidate vaccine.
Pfizer, for its part, is using FedEx to deliver doses directly to states.
Meanwhile, DHEC is enrolling hospitals and other health facilities in a vaccine distribution network. More than 300 providers have been enrolled by Friday, according to Renwick. These organizations will deal with vaccines, which may start at some points on Monday, following the expected approval by the US Food and Drug Administration of an emergency use authorization for BNT162b2.
Healthcare facilities in SC will also receive vaccines quickly as part of a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention program, through which CVS and Walgreens are handling distribution.
Dr. Brannon Traxler, DHEC’s acting director of public health, while in Greenville for a vaccine event on Thursday, told Vice President Mike Pence that approximately half of the state’s vaccine allocation this month is going to the initiative. long-term care of the CDC.
And although DHEC does not disclose the names of vaccine providers, The Island Packet and Beaufort Gazette It recently confirmed that dozens of hospitals are enrolled in the state network, from Abbeville Area Medical Center to St. Francis Downtown.
A Prisma Health spokeswoman in a statement on Thursday added that Prisma Health Greenville Memorial Hospital and Prisma Health Richland Hospital will receive the Pfizer vaccine “as soon as it is available”.
A spokeswoman for the Medical University of South Carolina also confirmed on Friday that MUSC is expecting initial doses and will distribute them to five of the system’s hospitals in Charleston, Chester, Florence, Lancaster and Marion counties.
Angela Shen, a visiting researcher at the Vaccine Education Center at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and a retired captain of the United States Public Health Service, in an interview on Thursday, said it makes sense for doses to reach hospitals first, and yet to large hospitals.
“Big points that can handle cold storage,” she said, will be crucial during Phase 1a allocations.
The SC Law Enforcement Division, in turn, can also play a role in the state’s vaccine network, according to the DHEC distribution plan.
SLED will provide security at sites and during vaccine application “as needed”.
“There’s not much I can go into,” said Tommy Crosby, an SLED spokesman, adding in a phone call on Thursday that disclosing information could impact the plan’s “affectability”.
‘The final destinations’
So, what do we not know?
Renwick said earlier that five sites would receive Pfizer’s vaccines first. She did not name them.
Later, she confirmed on Friday that 15 sites now expect to receive their starting doses.
During a press conference with reporters last week, White said the five locations at the time were spread across the state. At least one was in each DHEC region: Upstate, Midlands, Pee Dee and Lowcountry.
DHEC also selected a “centralized distribution location,” he said, where the agency could help deliver doses to smaller providers.
The first five sites, White added, could store doses at the ultra-low temperatures necessary to maintain the Pfizer vaccine for an extended period.
“We were equitable in terms of site selection across the state,” he said, adding that a “vaccine finder” showing the locations is likely to be available to people “in time”.
Renwick confirmed that all 15 locations on Friday had deep-frozen freezers. The 15 sites can “redistribute” vaccines to affiliate sites, she wrote, meaning that up to 56 sites may be up and running by the end of next week.
Exactly where Pfizer doses are directed immediately, however, has not been confirmed by DHEC.
Other states are taking a similar approach to South Carolina. Georgia, Mississippi and Virginia did not release the names of vaccine suppliers until Thursday, health department spokesmen said.
Georgia said “security” was a factor in its planning. Mississippi said Phase 1a will not affect the general public, so “there is no reason” to advertise sites publicly. Virginia said she is leaving it to hospitals to disclose their allocations.
In the meantime, West Virginia detailed which counties will have a vaccine center, but did not indicate individual locations.
“The state of West Virginia wishes to take all necessary precautions to avoid any disturbance in the vaccine distribution process to ensure that we can deliver the vaccine effectively, fairly and efficiently to our population,” wrote spokeswoman Allison Adler in a statement. communicated.
These types of concerns are well-founded, some experts point out.
The IBM Security X-Force group on December 3 reported that it had discovered a global phishing campaign targeting organizations that will support the COVID-19 cold chain.
The team was unable to determine whether the campaign was successful. It is not known who launched the effort, which probably started in September, but experts assume it was a “nation-state”.
The IBM report prompted the United States Infrastructure and Cybersecurity Security Agency to issue an alert encouraging members of the federal government’s Operation Warp Speed to look into the matter.
INTERPOL also sent a message to law enforcement officials on December 2, alerting officers to prepare for organized crime to attack the COVID-19 vaccine networks, either physically or online.
But experts said The Island Packet and Beaufort Gazette DHEC will eventually have to name vaccine sites.
“At some point, you need to make the final destinations known, because people need to know where to go to get the vaccines,” said Professor Mark Ferguson, a specialist in supply chain management at the University of South Carolina.
Shen of the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia agreed with Ferguson. Both health professionals and the general public will have to know this information someday, she said.
DHEC, said Ferguson, is likely to be quiet until the doses are really ready.
“From a security point of view, once you arrive at, say, a hospital, I think the biggest danger or risk ends up in terms of someone hijacking a shipment,” said Ferguson in an interview. “As you can imagine, there is probably a really profitable black market.”
(c) 2020 The Island Packet (Hilton Head, SC) Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.