COLOMBIA, SC (WMBF) – Critical data to show where the COVID-19 vaccine is going and who it is going to is still missing in South Carolina, or at least poorly presented so far.
During a press conference, state officials said they anticipate that a new panel will be launched on Tuesday.
“We are excited about this, and very soon,” said Nick Davidson, senior deputy for public health at the state Department of Health and Environmental Control. “We anticipate that it will have a friendly and graphically pleasant version to look at and easy to interpret.”
South Carolina’s immunization information system, SIMON, helps track administered vaccines and also captures demographic data.
DHEC says the panel will include data from the state’s immunization system, along with systems administered by the federal government, VAMS and Tiberius.
The main data points will include age, gender, racial and ethnic origin, along with geographical information.
Mary Beth Kurilo, senior director of health informatics at the American Immunization Registry Association, said that tracking this information helps to pinpoint how the vaccine is being distributed fairly.
Demographic data can help public health officials know who is in a population and how many are immunized. This helps to accurately match a patient to the data. It also helps to find pockets of need in geographic areas and where to deal with health disparities.
“Non-white populations are adversely affected, affected disproportionately by COVID. Race and ethnicity are very, very important, ”said Kurilo. “So we try to track race and ethnicity broadly so that we can be sure not only to understand the impact of the disease, but also the equitable distribution of the vaccine in the field.”
Kurilo speculated that a reason for the delay in a demographic presentation state may be that the reported information was not as complete as desired. But she attributed a more common reason potentially to efforts being devoted to other issues during the pandemic.
“I think a more common reason is just time – that everyone is struggling so quickly to integrate new suppliers, to make sure that the reports are as complete as possible, and many of those people are working 10, 12, 14 hours and not yet was unable to analyze the data and explore it for information in the way we would like. “
Other neighboring states, however, have been releasing demographic data for weeks.
Kurilo said that different states have different policies on information sharing or may have enhanced resources to deal with mining data like this.
“I know we see staffing and workflow problems in many of our jurisdictions, and while all states have an IIS, all IIS are not the same in terms of funding, resources and workforce,” she explained. “And then – there will be variations.”
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