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Federal authorities moved to Shelby County, Tennessee, this week as mismanagement disasters affecting the local coronavirus vaccine rollout reached a boiling point.
The county health department allowed more than 2,000 doses to go bad, two children were vaccinated against guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and one volunteer reportedly took doses from one site. The Tennessee Department of Health, FBI, and CDC are investigating. Shelby’s health department manager Alisa Haushalter resigned on Friday.
Now residents are wondering if the doses they received were outdated doses.
“You start to feel safe going out and doing things, but now you don’t know if you are covered or not. You don’t know whether the vaccine you received is working or not, ”said Gayle Jones, 80, who was born and raised in Cordova, Tennessee. She received her second injection of the Pfizer vaccine on Wednesday. “We missed a whole year by staying home. We finally felt we could go out and maybe be okay.
Hundreds of people echo his statements on Facebook in comments on county health department newsletters.
Ingrid Chilton, 68, expressed her frustration in a message: “Let’s talk about the thousands of Memphians who are unsure if they have been properly vaccinated since the vaccine thaw was not performed according to CDC guidelines!”
Chilton and her 75-year-old husband flew from their home in Tiburon, Calif., To visit their son in downtown Memphis for two weeks at the end of February 2020. They stayed for a year, living in the same two weeks of clothes. Saturday would be the day they achieved full immunity, two weeks away from their second Pfizer shots. She and her husband had started discussing their return to Tiburon.
“Today was the day I had to celebrate, like ‘We’re free!’ And instead we get this. I feel like we’re in limbo again, ”she told The Daily Beast.
The state began investigating the county health department last week after an announcement that the county had allowed 1,300 doses to expire in February. State investigators found that, in reality, 2,400 doses had gone wrong this month and were thrown away, including 840 wasted in one day, on February 15. the Tennessean reported.
Adding to residents’ fears, some doses have disappeared. State Health Commissioner Dr Lisa Piercey told a press conference on Friday that 12 syringes expired during a vaccination event on February 23, but no one returned them to the dispensing pharmacy. The doses were not counted.
“There seemed to be a lack of accountability and in a certain sense of leadership, which no doubt potentially harmed some people and denied the vaccine to people who needed it,” Piercey said.
Jones had hoped to feel safe witnessing the birth of two great-grandchildren soon. She thinks she will always be okay, although now with feelings of uncertainty and risk. Her daughter, son and two of her grandchildren have all had COVID-19. A granddaughter and a granddaughter are both pregnant and working in the health sector.
“We’ll have to take it as is. I don’t know if they will be able to prove whether the vaccine we received was real and effective or not, ”she said.
Chilton will postpone his trip until the investigation into the vaccination effort is completed.
“I don’t know if we will ever know for sure whether or not we are protected,” she said.
The Memphis City Health Department has resumed countywide vaccination efforts.
In addition to its procedural problems, the vaccination effort suffered an alleged theft. The state informed the FBI on Thursday that a volunteer allegedly stole doses of the vaccine on February 3, according to Piercey. The state health commissioner said the city had not released information about the missing doses, which delayed its notification by nearly a month. Shelby County Administrative Director Dwan Gilliom said Piercey was wrong and law enforcement had been notified but no arrests had been made.
Two children were also vaccinated in Shelby County on February 3, according to Piercey. Neither the Moderna vaccine nor Pfizer are approved for people under the age of 16 because the drug has only been tested on adults.
The mess has further eroded Jones’ already cratered confidence in local government, which has struggled to collect trash and provide residents with water in recent weeks.
“They just need to get their act together in the Memphis government. They are absolutely unreliable, ”Jones said. “We have just boiled the water for 8 days because the whole network broke down. It just makes you think, ‘Oh my God, can’t you do anything?’ “
Chilton feels the same.
“I don’t think my feelings towards the county and state health department would be apt to print, frankly,” she said.
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