State officials warned on Monday afternoon that North Carolina is close to running out of its supply of the first doses of COVID-19 vaccines, which has led to the cancellation of some appointments for upcoming clinics in Dare County.
“There are no appropriate words to describe the frustration and dismay felt by me and our team at having to cancel vaccination appointments for Friday’s clinic due to no fault of ours,” said Dr. Sheila Davies, Director of Dare County Health Department & Human Services.
“People in Dare County and rural North Carolina deserve an equitable distribution of vaccines from the state,” said Davies. “We have modeled how to safely and efficiently administer a large number of vaccines and have repeatedly communicated to the state that we could vaccinate 2,000 to 4,000 people a week if these vaccines were assigned to us.”
Dare County’s distribution has been cut in half, and as a result, about 300 appointments scheduled for this Friday may have to be rescheduled, according to a press release from the Dare County Health Department.
“Due to the generous transfer of vaccines from Outer Banks Hospital and an early transfer from Onslow Memorial Hospital, we will not have to reschedule all 1100 appointments originally scheduled for Friday, January 29,” said the department.
Davies said on Monday morning that he has sent several emails to state health leaders since last week, begging for more information and for the state not to give up the promised allocation to Dare and other rural counties that are now destined for the city more. North Carolina population.
“If someone could take 700 doses of the 30,000 event, I will personally make the 11-hour round trip from Dare to Charlotte to pick up the doses, if that means not having to cancel our clinic,” Davies wrote to the Department of Health and NC Human Services team members.
More from the Dare DHHS statement:
As of this update, only the commitments scheduled for January 29, 2021 are being impacted. If you or a loved one has an appointment for this clinic and if your appointment is being affected by the lack of vaccine, you will receive a call to reschedule. Be patient and wait for an employee to call you. Everyone will be contacted by appointment when the vaccine is available to accommodate you.
The Dare County Department of Health and Human Services has made a number of efforts to work with NC Public Health to obtain the additional vaccines needed to attend appointments this week and will continue to advocate for increased vaccine supplies to its residents.
You can refer any concerns or questions about vaccine allocation to Dare County to your state representatives or the North Carolina Public Health customer service center at 1-800-662-7030.
The North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services reported that 88 percent of all first doses were administered on Sunday night.
As of Wednesday, North Carolina will have just 120,000 doses to distribute across the state, according to a statement from the NCDHSS.
The department said that a significant portion of these doses are committed to the large-scale events planned several weeks ago to resolve the vaccine buildup.
The News and Observer reported Saturday one that includes events at Charlotte Motor Speedway and Bank of America Stadium in Charlotte.
As a result, many providers are receiving little or no allocation for the next week and health departments and hospitals in North Carolina have been forced to cancel appointments and future clinics.
Echoing much of the frustration shared by his colleagues across the state, Davies sent a concise email to Raleigh, including North Carolina’s Director of Health, Betsy Tilson:
Have you received emails this weekend about how frustrated, angry, hurt and disrespected health directors across the state are feeling?
I was thinking about Thursday night, when we were notified that we would only receive 600 doses next week, that Dare County was in the minority, but after receiving at least 20 emails from health directors who had their quotas cut like ours, I realized that I am not alone. It gives me no comfort.
The governor, Dr. Cohen, and top state leaders preached to us about the urgency of vaccinating and documenting more than once in the past week and called us to action. As the health departments in NC continue to do, day after day, we step up and deliver. But instead of the state relying on these loyal public servants, I believe that our allocations have been diluted to be sent to large-scale urban events hosted by state partners. It is really difficult to describe what a stab in the back looks like. The same teams that blew up for 11 months have been defeated and that is disappointing and painful. I have a good record of some people that things in Raleigh were pretty hot on Friday afternoon because there were at least a few partners who were trying to defend local (and especially rural) public health.
I love my community, just as my fellow local health directors do across the state. The motivation to work 7 days a week for almost 11 months is to do everything in our power to help improve the health and well-being of the people we serve. At clinics planned last week and run this week, we provided and documented approximately 2,900 doses in the past week alone. We vaccinated almost 1200 people yesterday at our largest mass clinic to date. No person remained in our building for more than 30 minutes (entrance to exit, including the necessary monitoring time of 15 minutes). It was an extraordinarily successful event and demonstrated that we easily have the capacity in Dare County to vaccinate 2,000 people a day at our clinics. Yes, 2,000 PEOPLE IN DARE COUNTY PER DAY! Local public health, even in non-urban areas, can form powerful teams and deliver extraordinary results.
We have faith and confidence in the state’s leadership throughout this pandemic and expect the same courtesy. The state has to find a way to put more doses in the local health departments and not redirect them to large events with corporate partners. The state also needs to target doses to health departments that are consistently following phase guidelines and not just vaccinating those who get in line. Hearing about the 16,000 and 30,000 doses administered at some large-scale events in urban areas is a real slap in the face for rural areas, which have demonstrated an ability to deliver (and are begging for 700 doses).
This intermediate dose allocation shift from local rural public health departments is forcing many of us to have to call thousands of people aged 65 and over and postpone their appointment until who knows when. Dare County needs 700 additional doses this week to prevent this from happening, but it does not look like we will receive any additional doses, but will 30,000 doses be administered this week at Bank of America Stadium in Charlotte?
https://spectrumlocalnews.com/nc/charlotte/news/2021/01/22/atrium-health-begins-covid-19-vaccine-distributions-at-charlotte-motor-speedway
Anyway, to quote one of my colleagues from the many emails between health directors this weekend, “Terrible position (NC DHHS) puts local partners who have been killing themselves trying to help him. With partners like that you don’t need enemies ”.
I think it is important for you to know that kick in the stomach many of us feel we have received.
WRAL-TV reported that NCDHHS secretary Dr. Mandy Cohen took responsibility for a conference call with health and hospital department leaders on Monday afternoon for pressuring them to use as much of their vaccines as possible on last week.
The state has asked hospitals and health departments in recent weeks to speed up and eliminate a backlog of doses so that the federal government does not punish the state by reducing future shipments, according to the WRAL. But the new pace does not mean that the state would receive more than the approximately 120,000 first doses it has been receiving each week.
“I apologize for not being clearer,” said Cohen on the afternoon call. “This is mine and I apologize. This put you all in a difficult position. “
“As long as we receive such a small amount of vaccine as a state, there will be challenges and shortages, as we will try to ensure equitable access to the vaccine and, at the same time, apply vaccines to weapons quickly. We understand that it is difficult for providers who are doing everything right, ”said Cohen in a statement released after the conference call.
The NCDHHS said it would share more detailed guidance on the allocation process for the coming weeks on Tuesday “to ensure more transparency and certainty now that the state has largely exhausted the accumulation of vaccine supplies.”