After a federal report earlier this month showed that South Carolina was among the worst states when it came to vaccination rates, another new report shows that the state is among the best when it comes to utilization rates.
Becker’s Hospital Review, a national health care information forum, released states ranked by the percentage of COVID-19 vaccines administered, and South Carolina is ranked 10th for administering more than 61% of the total doses it has received. The daily report tracks the total number of vaccine doses each state has received and the number that has been injected into weapons.
This is compared to a mid-January report by the Federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which indicated that South Carolina was among the lowest states for rates of distributed doses and injections administered by 100,000 people, but Dr. Brannon Traxler, acting director of public health for the state’s Department of Health and Environmental Control, said during a news conference on Wednesday that the report did not include more than 200,000 doses that Palmetto’s state dedicated in a lump sum to one state effort to vaccinate residents of long-term care facilities and state employees.
Still, South Carolina administered only about 297,450 doses, including the first and second doses, to 5.2 million residents of the state.
More than 329,200 COVID-19 vaccine consultations are currently scheduled, according to DHEC as of Wednesday afternoon.
“It’s a huge undertaking,” said Traxler.
She reiterated, as she did every month, that the biggest obstacle remains the flow of vaccines from the federal government.
She said on Wednesday that the state is about to start receiving a 16% dose increase, meaning that South Carolina will receive 72,600 first doses starting next week instead of 62,600.
Some of this week’s doses were for older adults in Clarendon County.
On a rainy Wednesday morning, the cars stopped at the Clarendon County Recreation Department gym behind the Weldon Auditorium to receive a COVID-19 vaccine in a “closed compartment”.
From 10 am to 4 pm, Clarendon County and McLeod Health Clarendon employees collaborated to vaccinate about 50 people aged 70 and over to ensure they received an injection for Phase 1a.
“We are just trying to ensure that the community is vaccinated in one way or another,” said Robert “Bobby” Ridgeway III, medical director for Clarendon County Fire Rescue and assistant chief that state deputy Kimberly Johnson was successful in this year. “We don’t have enough vaccines to help everyone, but we help whoever we can.”
The importance of Wednesday’s vaccination appointments, he said, is to streamline the scheduling process for the elderly.
“What is difficult for most seniors is that they do not have access to the Internet or are not very computer savvy,” said Ridgeway. “We are doing this on paper and putting it on the computer for them.”
Even with a limited number of doses, they wanted to maximize vaccinations for older individuals, a segment of the population that was most vulnerable to falling ill and dying of COVID-19 infection.
Pam Flagler, who works as a nurse at McLeod Health Clarendon, said she vaccinated people on Tuesday at Manning hospital. Flagler said that they started around 7:30 am and that at 11am they finished all the COVID-19 vaccines that had been delivered.
With rural communities in mind, some state lawmakers expressed concern on Wednesday that a measure that the House gave fundamental approval would not adequately address the needs of rural communities.
South Carolina lawmakers are competing to override the DHEC board in an allocation plan designed to equitably distribute the state’s limited vaccine supply. The plan would direct DHEC to allocate limited vaccine supplies across the state’s four regions, requiring it to take into account factors such as rural and underserved areas in a region, impoverished populations and how many elderly residents it has.
Lawmakers intervened after the council appointed by the DHEC governor provisionally voted on Tuesday to distribute doses of vaccine to counties based strictly on population size.
Governor Henry McMaster told reporters on Wednesday that the state will also try to open vaccination for those over 65 “as soon as we can”.
Vaccines are currently open to nearly a million people, according to The Associated Press, including healthcare professionals, residents and employees of long-term care facilities, people over 70, certain hospital patients over 65 and certain caregivers of clinically vulnerable children.
This did not prevent companies and individuals from submitting a petition to the state’s Vaccine Advisory Committee to move up the list.
Groups of teachers, state superintendent of education Molly Spearman and some legislators also pleaded with DHEC to put teachers above other essential workers in Phase 1b of the vaccination plan, citing the need to take children back to school for face-to-face learning. the face.
The groups say schools are facing a severe shortage of staff, as some teachers take sick leave because they are in high-risk categories for the virus, and others need to be quarantined because they have contracted COVID-19.
DHEC estimates that more than half a million South Carolinians will be eligible for Phase 1b, which they plan to start in “early spring” this year. The state has about 50,000 certified teachers.
Also on Wednesday, Traxler said that DHEC received reports from some providers inoculating people currently ineligible for the vaccine. That puts people at greater risk of dying from COVID-19 even further, said Traxler.
“Any provider that chooses not to follow the state’s vaccination phase guidelines,” she said, “is creating chaos, frustration and confusion.”