Hospitals thought they were seeing shortages of Covid-19 vaccines. Sometimes they have to throw away doses

“Every dose that is in someone’s arm is someone who is not going to get sick with Covid,” he says. “There’s no point in trying to ration it like that, week after week, because any dose that is in a refrigerator is a life that is not potentially saved.”

Finding people to be vaccinated

It will begin on Monday, when New York City opens to first responders, teachers and residents 75 and over, in addition to prioritizing healthcare workers.

The frustration had already increased. On Tuesday evening last week, nurses at the Harlem Family Health Center in New York City scoured the neighborhood trying to find people eligible to receive a Covid-19 vaccine.

The health center had a few extra doses of the Moderna vaccine that had been removed from the cold room. The doses were supposed to be given to health workers – but some did not show up for their appointments and time was running out.

“It expires six hours after taking the first dose from the vial,” Calman said.

That night the nurses “went out into the community, and they went to two open pharmacies and asked if any of the pharmacists there wanted the vaccine,” Calman said. “They went to a fire station, which is down the street, to see if any of the people in the station needed any vaccines. … They went to a residential facility.

By the end of that night, there were still “three to four” doses left and they were thrown away, Calman said.

“We have to keep the priority levels – I think it’s very important to have health workers first and to be able to bring in teachers now and others,” Calman said. “But during this time, the health care community should be able to immunize our most at risk patients and be able to use our professional judgment to determine who these people are and who we can get vaccinated for.

“We expect these issues to be resolved”

Nationwide, Legacy Health, a nonprofit healthcare system with six hospitals in Oregon and southwest Washington, confirmed to CNN on Friday that, during its first vaccination efforts last month, 27 Doses of the Pfizer / BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine had been thrown out because they expired before it was time to put them into arms – and some initial information provided about the vaccine was unclear.

Brian Terrett, a spokesperson for Legacy Health, told CNN in an email that hospitals under Legacy Health schedule vaccinations based on the initial information, as long as each vial of the vaccine contains five doses. It turns out that some vials contain six or seven doses – and at the time, hospitals had extra doses, but no one was scheduled or available to administer them.

So “the 27 expired doses came at the start of our vaccination effort when we had more vaccines than patients,” Terrett said. “Having six or seven doses in a vial allowed us to immunize almost 700 more people than we were allocated. For each expired vaccine, Legacy vaccinated nearly 25 more people than planned.”

As reports emerge nationwide of Covid-19 vaccines in some hospitals that are not in use, the American Hospital Association responded in a statement that it expects “these issues to be resolved” .

The association represents and serves American hospitals and health care networks.

“US hospitals and health systems are working hard to deliver COVID-19 vaccines as quickly and safely as possible, in accordance with their state or local jurisdiction’s microplan prescriptions,” said Rick Pollack. , chairman and chief executive officer of the AHA, in a statement sent to CNN on Friday.

“At the same time, we continue to treat large numbers of COVID-19 patients under very stressful circumstances involving PPE shortages, labor shortages and limited ICU bed capacity in some areas. Mass vaccination is a huge and complex process – and not unlike any other effort of this kind – there are always obstacles in the way on any large government enterprise, especially at the beginning, ”Pollack said in part. . “We expect these issues to be resolved and the pace of vaccinations will increase dramatically over the next few weeks.”

Slow deployment in long-term care facilities

Immunization of residents and staff of long-term care facilities is also progressing slowly in many places. As of Friday morning, more than 4 million doses had been distributed for use in long-term care facilities, but fewer than 700,000 eligible people had received their first dose.

The federal government has partnered with CVS and Walgreens to facilitate immunization at participating long-term care facilities.

In a statement on Wednesday, CVS said the number of residents in need of vaccination was 20-30% lower than initial projections and that “initial staff membership is low,” although part of this may be due at facilities that stagger vaccination among staff.

Walgreens, meanwhile, told CNN that any unused doses are reallocated to the next scheduled clinic in a long-term care facility, and that any doses that may expire before that date “can be used to vaccinate members. from the Walgreens team who are eligible to receive vaccines as part of the Phase 1a plan outlined by the CDC and States. “

West Virginia leads the United States in per capita vaccine doses, and long-term care facilities may be a part of that. West Virginia was the only state to withdraw from the federal program to distribute the Covid-19 vaccine to staff and residents of long-term care facilities; he began vaccinating people at these facilities about a week before the federal program began in other states.

More than 40% of West Virginia pharmacies are not affiliated with a chain and the state wanted to prioritize existing relationships, the governor said at a press briefing on Dec. 16.

“Instead, we’ve partnered up with all the pharmacies in West Virginia,” Governor Jim Justice said in December. “We felt that, from a state’s perspective, would limit our ability to quickly distribute and administer the vaccine to the population in need if we had gone with the federal program.