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Amid assurances from major medical centers in Southern California that only frontline health workers are receiving early COVID-19 vaccines, a second community hospital has apparently deviated from federal guidelines and inoculated a relative of ‘an employee.
Officials at Culver City Southern California Hospital, like Redlands Community Hospital before, admit contacting non-hospital workers when they found themselves with extra doses of Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine that would otherwise have expired. They insist, however, that first responders have been targeted for the extra doses in the 420-bed facility.
Elsewhere, officials from other medical facilities in the region have said they are strictly following the Centers for Disease Control recommendations to offer only the vaccine and additional doses found in certain vials to frontline workers.
“We really held the line and made sure the frontline workers came first,” said Krist Azizian, director of pharmacy at USC’s Keck Medicine, which has around 9,000 workers. “We are not offering it to family members of our staff.”
Time is running out to dispense the Pfizer vaccine, which must be stored at -94 degrees Fahrenheit and administered shortly after thawing or it is wasted.
Staff refuse vaccine
A former national emergency management leader, who asked not to be identified, said this week that just before Christmas, a relative who works at the Southern California hospital invited family members to receive the vaccines Pfizer in the facility.
The woman provided the Southern California News Group with text messages from the hospital indicating her appointment and subsequent inoculation. She is due to return to the hospital in January to receive a second dose of the vaccine.
“The hospital had planned to vaccinate all of its employees, but a lot of their employees refused and they were sitting on a lot of thawed vaccines,” the woman said, explaining what hospital staff told her. “They offered the police, firefighters and first responders to get vaccinated and also told employees they could invite four family members.”
Soon the hospital was overwhelmed by those calling for the extra doses of Pfizer, forcing the facility to stop offering vaccines to loved ones and focus primarily on first responders, the woman said.
No time for a new distribution plan
The woman praised the Southern California Hospital for taking swift action to make sure vaccines were not wasted.
“Faced with thawed and expired vaccines that cannot be refrozen, and no contingency plan, doctors have made the choice to vaccinate people they can,” she said. “That’s what doctors do, save lives. This is what happens in disasters. Situations are constantly changing and people must make command decisions to save as many lives as possible within the limits of their current capabilities. Hospitals are overwhelmed with saving lives and have no time to stop and create a new vaccine distribution plan for a small amount of vaccine that is about to expire.
Southern California Hospital denies relatives of employees were invited to the facility to receive the Pfizer vaccine, spokeswoman Laura M. Gilbert said.
After hospital staff collected frozen vaccines from a distribution center last week, they quickly realized that the amount of doses exceeded the number of staff at the facility, she said. .
“The excess could not be returned to the distribution center,” she said in an email. “The instructions that came with the vaccine state that the vaccine has a five-day shelf life when taken out of the approved freezer. The distribution center said the vaccine should not be stored in dry ice or in transport freezers. All the vaccine must have been used within five days or wasted. “
After inoculating all hospital workers who requested the vaccine, staff contacted doctors who treat patients at the facility, as well as local first responders, including police, firefighters and medical technicians. emergency to inform them of the availability of the vaccine, according to Gilbert. In addition, some officials were also vaccinated.
“This decisive action allowed us to achieve our goal of immunizing all frontline staff as quickly as possible and avoiding the wastage of valuable vaccines,” said Gilbert.
‘A reasonable explanation’
It appears the Southern California hospital handled the situation correctly, said Andrew Noymer, associate professor of public health at UC Irvine.
“It seems like a reasonable explanation,” he added. “If they really got more vaccines than they can use, it’s not really their fault.”
However, Dr. David D. Lo, senior associate dean of research at UC Riverside School of Medicine, disagrees.
“They’re not exactly denying that family members of staff were vaccinated, just that they were not invited,” he said. “Moreover, it gave no indication that they had actually planned their vaccination strategy.”
In another incident, a 33-year-old woman from Riverside recently boasted on Facebook that she was vaccinated on December 20 at the Redlands Community Hospital because her husband’s aunt, who works at the facility, had extra doses that were due to expire.
“Science is basically my religion so that was a big deal for me,” the woman said in a Facebook post.
The Redlands community said in a statement that the extra doses were given to non-frontline healthcare workers so the precious vaccine was not thrown away.
However, the hospital did not explain how the woman, who works for Disney and is apparently not a medical worker, was able to obtain the vaccine.
Smooth deployment for others
Many hospitals in Southern California have been planning and preparing for months to distribute COVID-19 vaccines, along with excessive doses.
At USC’s Keck Hospital and USC Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center, about 8,825 doses of Pfizer vaccine are provided to about 3,300 doctors, nurses and support staff, Azizian said. Almost 6,000 remaining employees are awaiting vaccination or in planning.
Keck Medicine, which hasn’t had many no-shows, is providing vaccines to around 400 frontline workers a day, spokeswoman Cynthia Smith said. About 15% of the vaccines already delivered to Keck Medicine contained an additional dose, helping to speed up and maximize the inoculation process, Azizian said.
“We are able to vaccinate more people to reach our goal faster, hopefully,” he added.
Officials at UCLA Health, Long Beach Memorial Hospital, and Orange Coast Medical Center in Fountain Valley also said additional doses of Pfizer are being distributed to staff who regularly come into contact with and treat COVID-19 patients.
Loma Linda University Medical Center is using the extra doses to routinely go through its distribution plan that was developed well in advance of receiving the vaccines, said preventive medicine specialist Dr April Wilson.
“The plan prioritized those caring for patients with COVID-19 and within that group those at highest risk by age, then moved to progressively younger age groups,” a- she declared. “We then offered the vaccine to those in the inpatient units, and then we led the care of the patients. The extra doses got us off the priority list “
At the UCI Medical Center, nearly 6,000 employees have received vaccines during scheduled appointments or staff visits to their workplaces to administer doses, spokesman John Murray said.
“This approach ensures that the doses are or will be available to all UCI Healthcare employees who want them and that the doses are only offered to those who work for our healthcare system,” he said. “Fortunately, the extra doses per vial of Pfizer vaccine allowed us to vaccinate even more of our staff faster than expected.”
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