COLUMBIA – Delays in new COVID-19 vaccine shipments are forcing several large hospitals in South Carolina to reschedule and stop accepting new ones.
The setback comes as changes to delivery plans bring fewer doses of vaccine and shipments from drug manufacturers come later in the week, according to hospital systems in South Carolina.
Prisma Health, the state’s largest health care provider, woke up this week by shifting doses back and forth between major vaccination sites in the Upstate and Midlands, when births did not arrive on Feb. 9, as expected. The previous day’s shipment also came with fewer doses than anticipated, said Dr. Saria Saccocio, co-chair of the Prisma Health vaccine working group.
Automatic phone calls were made to the elderly, as many meetings had to be canceled, although Saccocio did not have an exact number of people affected.
“The result is a really complex issue when it comes to scheduling,” Dr. Danielle Scheurer, chief health officer of the University of South Carolina Medical System, said in an online post. “How, in good conscience, do you plan to get vaccinated when you’re not even sure if you’ll have it?” We don’t literally know what we get week in and week out until we open that box. ”
MUSC spokeswoman Heather Woolwine also acknowledged on February 9 that the hospital system may need to change its scheduled vaccine schedules. She said MUSC Health apologized to patients for “the inconvenience and frustration that rescheduling can cause.”
Scheurer said MUSC was pushing as many meetings as possible over the weekend and froze all new meetings.
“All we can manage is what we are given and right now we don’t get much,” she said.
This is not the first time the doses have run out.
Thousands of meetings had to be canceled last month, when the 70-year-olds or older became newly eligible and hospitals made appointments based on the incorrect assumption that their future supply deliveries would be much higher.
The latest delays come in the same week that South Carolina extended vaccine eligibility to 309,000 seniors between the ages of 65 and 69.
Now that so many people need secondary doses, the first doses and boosters arrive in separate shipments, the State Department of Health and Environmental Control explained. Before, South Carolina did not use both doses every week, so they were replenished for the first doses, while Governor Henry McMaster asked hospitals to empty their shelves.
“On the day of the next expedition, the old shipment should be in someone’s arms,” he said.
Now the trend has been reversed and two thirds of the photos taken at Prisma are for those who need their tracking dose.
DHEC said it urges hospitals not to have regular mass clinics that could exceed the weekly dose of a facility until vaccines become more widely available.
Dr. Robert Oliverio, CEO at Roper St. Francis Physician Partners said the hospital system had interrupted the scheduling of any new meetings for COVID-19 vaccines to ensure that existing appointments made by mid-March would be honored.
“If the vaccine supply drops considerably, it can change,” he said.
The hospital system may also use the first dose as the second dose to ensure that everyone who has already received the first dose can receive the second dose.
“We run week after week,” Oliverio said. “We will probably be fine by next Tuesday or Wednesday. But it really depends on what’s coming on the truck.
On the other hand, hospitals like Bon Secours St. Francis of Greenville and Conway Medical Center along Grand Strand say they have enough doses to vaccinate everyone who currently has a date.
Tidelands Health, which operates two clinics in Murrells Inlet and Georgetown, has received 1,000 doses in each of the past two weeks – far from the initial expectation of 2,000 and even further from its capacity of 5,000 per week.
The unpredictability of what will be delivered kept staff scheduling on hold, according to Gayle Resetar, Tidelands Health’s chief operating officer. The specialists organize 1,000 meetings a week and, if it is being stocked, the staff works all weekend to exhaust the remaining doses.
As of February 9, Tidelands had a waiting list of 19,000, and Resetar estimates that it will be at least two months before they can serve the extended group of those aged 65 to 69.
So far, the provider has not had to cancel any meetings, as a second round of dosing for those aged 70 and over is underway this week.
“There was so much news and anxiety that, although they knew they had a meeting, they were all prepared that eventually we would call them and say that we did not receive it. But I did it, “said Resetar.
Walk-ins also caused a problem this week, Prisma said, following an increase in demand from newly eligible seniors, which prompted the hospital system to discontinue the practice.
“The 65- to 69-year-old group has appeared in overwhelming numbers and we’ve exhausted our entire vaccine offering for this week,” Saccocio said.
The hospital system will continue to accept walk-ins for those without appointments who need a second dose, as long as 26 days have passed since they received the first blow. Prisma is expected to receive the delayed shipment on Feb. 10, and another containing booster doses Feb. 11, Saccocio said.
Meanwhile, more sites are being added to reach people living in rural areas.
The Charleston and Fetter County Health Care Network will begin vaccination on Feb. 16 on a first-come, first-served basis between 9 a.m. and 2 p.m. at St. Louis Library. Paul / Hollywood from Hollywood. Anthony Poole, chief clinical and quality officer for the Fetter Health Care Network, said his team will be ready to deliver between 800 and 1,000 doses.
In total, 1.3 million South Carolinaers are on the eligibility list, which already included seniors aged 70 and over, health workers of all kinds and long-term care residents.
As of Monday, nearly 471,000 South Carolinians had received at least the initial blow and more than 410,000 doses had been booked by appointment, according to DHEC.
The announcement also came on a day when lawmakers resumed the debate on how to vaccinate educators without removing seniors from their appointments, with the aim of bringing students back to class in a full five weeks. days at national level, before the end of the school year.
DHEC officials said the only way to get shot in the arms of more than 71,000 K-12 employees willing to roll up their sleeves nationwide now would be to redirect all doses for two weeks to exertion, canceling vaccine timeframes. reserved for appointments.
Jessica Holdman and Sean Adcox reported from Colombia and Lauren Sausser from Charleston. Shamira McCray contributed from Charleston, Nick Masuda from Myrtle Beach and Natalie Walters from Greenville.