In a short time, the city of Memphis intends to administer 40,000 to 50,000 doses of the COVID vaccine a week, three or four times the current level, and quickly and efficiently.
She is investigating a large student-run call center at the University of Memphis to manage appointments over the phone and, within weeks, will be making appointments online through a state-run system that will simultaneously schedule the first and second doses.
“The city of Memphis soberly accepts this responsibility. We don’t take it lightly, ”Mayor Jim Strickland told reporters late Tuesday afternoon, February 23.
“Our mission to vaccinate as many people as possible as quickly as possible is critical to keeping the virus under control and getting back to normal as soon as possible.”
More than 2,400 doses have expired on seven different occasions. He also had 51,000 doses in stock, including 30,000 that should have been administered.
These doses, which expire in early March, are coming out this week in what is expected to be a major effort to inoculate 40,000 people, including about 10,000 teachers.
Next week, Shelby County will receive 13,700 first doses.
One of the issues for the new team in charge, said Doug McGowen, Memphis city chief operating officer, is how to split the supply by partner to better cover the county, including doses to private pharmacies and health clinics.
“It is about responsibility, transparency and monitoring of our performance,” he said. “We are doing this today at the units we operate.
In mid-March, when the increase in Pfizer production begins and the Johnson & Johnson vaccine has potentially received an emergency use permit, the county may be receiving 30,000 to 40,000 doses per week.
This, said McGowen, is “where we need to be for people to be vaccinated this summer.”
What citizens should immediately notice, said Strickland, is the efficient entry and exit of the sites, although, for at least a few more weeks, they sign up through the SignUpGenius website.
In Pipkin on Tuesday, the wait earlier in the day was about an hour, said Tiffany Collins, the city’s deputy director of general services and responsible for the city’s administered vaccination sites.
“We saw the average waiting time of about 20 minutes,” said Collins on Tuesday afternoon. “And if you were there now, there would probably be no line, you wouldn’t wait. We vaccinated more than 800 people and it’s 4 hours. “
Pipkin had 1,200 appointments on Tuesday, she said, “and we are limiting the average waiting time from less than hours to less than half an hour.”
The city and the University of Tennessee Health Sciences Center have jointly run the Appling City Cove site since mid-January, without long lines or having to turn down people.
The partners early on said that people could only arrive an hour before appointments. If they were before, they were rejected. Appointments have been verified; people without them could not enter.
The Appling operation also engages people in line to obtain information about the vaccine so that these delays do not occur within the old vehicle inspection post.
It is unclear whether the city will be responsible for more sites, including smaller pop-up sites, said Strickland.
“What we are trying to do is make a perfect transition over the next week to 10 days, properly administer doses in the three locations we operate and work with the state,” he said.
The vaccination system until now was led by the Shelby County Health Department, an agency of the county government.
Strickland chose his words carefully when asked how he felt about hearing the number of missed doses.
“I am obviously disappointed. I don’t fully understand all the reasons, ”he said.
Last week, Health Department director Alisa Haushalter said 1,300 doses had been missed. The state said on Tuesday that the actual number was 2,400.
In addition to the scale of the loss, Strickland says the city now has “to put its arms around how many doses are in stock and get those doses as soon as we can”.
James Dixon, a citizen, says Shelby County Mayor Lee Harris, “in my opinion, has failed all Shelby County residents.
“Why did it take so long to remove the Shelby County Health Department from the vaccination process?” he asked in an email.
Strickland said he was “really concerned” whether the city should have been asked to intervene earlier.
“What we’re trying to do together is to make sure that operations go smoothly in the future. It’s still a team effort. The Ministry of Health still has a role. They are still the leaders of the general pandemic, ”said Strickland.