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COLUMBIA – Delays in new shipments of COVID-19 vaccines are forcing several major South Carolina hospitals to postpone their appointments and stop accepting new ones.
The setback comes as changes in delivery plans result in fewer doses of vaccine and shipments from drug makers arrive later in the week, according to South Carolina Hospital Systems.
Prisma Health, the state’s largest healthcare provider, found itself this week moving doses between major vaccination sites in the upstate and Midlands when deliveries did not arrive on February 9 as expected. The previous day’s expedition also came with fewer doses than expected, said Dr Saria Saccocio, co-chair of the Prisma Health Vaccine Working Group.
Automated phone calls were sent to the elderly as many appointments had to be canceled, although Saccocio does not have an exact number affected.
“The result is a really complex problem when it comes to planning,” Dr. Danielle Scheurer, health system quality manager at the University of South Carolina, said in an online post. “How in good conscience do you plan for patients to get a vaccine when you are not even sure you will receive it?” We literally don’t know what we’re getting week after week until we open this box.
MUSC spokeswoman Heather Woolwine also acknowledged on Feb.9 that the hospital system may need to change scheduled immunization appointments. She said MUSC Health apologizes to patients for the “inconvenience and frustration that postponing appointments can cause.”
Scheurer said MUSC is pushing back as many dates as possible later in the week and has frozen all new dates.
“All we can administer is what we are given, and at the moment we just don’t get a lot,” she said.
This is not the first time that the doses have been used up.
Thousands of appointments had to be canceled last month when these people aged 70 and over became eligible and hospitals made appointments based on the mistaken assumption that their future shipments of supplies would be many. more important.
The latest delays come the same week South Carolina extended vaccine eligibility to 309,000 people aged 65 to 69.
Now that so many people need second doses, the first doses and boosters are coming in separate shipments, the Department of Health and Environmental Control said. Previously, South Carolina did not use all of its second doses each week, so they were reused for the first doses, with Governor Henry McMaster urging hospitals to empty their shelves.
“The day the next expedition arrives, the old expedition should be in someone’s arm,” he said.
Now the trend has reversed and two-thirds of the injections given to Prisma are for those who need their follow-up dose.
DHEC said it is urging hospitals not to hold regular mass clinics that may exceed a facility’s weekly dose allocation until vaccines are more widely available.
Dr Robert Oliverio, CEO of Roper St. Francis Physician Partners, said the hospital system has suspended scheduling any new appointments for COVID-19 vaccines to ensure that existing appointments made until the mid-March will be honored.
“If the vaccine supply drops dramatically, that can change,” he said.
The hospital system may also resort to using the first doses as second doses to ensure that anyone who has already received the first dose can receive the second.
“We run from week to week,” Oliverio said. “We will probably be fine until next Tuesday or Wednesday. But it really depends on what happens to the truck.
On the other hand, hospitals like Bon Secours St. Francis in Greenville and Conway Medical Center along the Grand Strand say they have enough doses to vaccinate anyone who currently has an appointment.
Tidelands Health, which operates two clinics in Murrells Inlet and Georgetown, has received 1,000 doses in each of the past two weeks – a far cry from its initial expectation of 2,000 and still more than its 5,000-a-week capacity.
The unpredictability of what will be delivered has kept staff on hold, according to Gayle Resetar, COO of Tidelands Health. Specialists line up 1,000 appointments per week, and if more supplies are on their way, staff work through the weekend to use up remaining doses.
As of February 9, Tidelands had a waiting list of 19,000 and Resetar believes it will take at least two months before it can serve the expanded pool of people aged 65 to 69.
So far, the provider has not had to cancel any appointments as a second round of doses for those 70 and over is on its way this week.
“There was so much news and angst that even though they knew they had a date, they were just ready for us to call them up and say we didn’t. But we did it, ”Resetar said.
Walk-in visits also caused a problem this week, Prisma said, following an increase in demand from newly eligible seniors that led the hospital system to suspend the practice.
“The 65 to 69 age group turned up in overwhelming numbers, and we’ve used up our entire supply of walk-in vaccines for this week,” Saccocio said.
The hospital system will still accept walk-in visits for people without an appointment who need a second dose as long as 26 days have passed since their first injection. Prisma expects to receive its delayed shipment on February 10 and another containing booster doses on February 11, Saccocio said.
Meanwhile, more sites are added to reach people living in rural areas.
Charleston County and the Fetter Health Care Network will begin vaccination Feb. 16 on a first-come, first-served basis from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. at St. Paul’s / Hollywood Library in Hollywood. Anthony Poole, clinical and quality manager for the Fetter Health Care Network, said his team would be ready to administer between 800 and 1,000 doses.
In all, 1.3 million Southern Carolinians are on the eligibility list, which already included people aged 70 and over, healthcare workers of all kinds and long-term care residents.
As of Monday, nearly 471,000 South Carolinians had received at least their initial injection, and more than 410,000 doses had been reserved by appointment, according to the DHEC.
The announcement also came on a day when lawmakers resumed debate over how to vaccinate educators without excluding older people from their appointments, with the goal of bringing students back to class for a full five-day week in statewide before the end of the school year.
DHEC officials said the only way to get vaccines in the arms of the more than 71,000 K-12 employees across the state wanting to roll up their sleeves now would be to divert all doses for two weeks to the effort, by canceling the time slots for vaccines booked by appointment.
Jessica holdman and Sean adcox reported from Columbia and Lauren Sausser of Charleston. Shamira McCray contributed from Charleston, Nick masuda from Myrtle Beach and Natalie Walters of Greenville.
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