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As a dangerous winter storm hits Texas, leaving millions of people without power and at least two people dead, public health officials scramble to save one of the most essential commodities: coronavirus vaccines.
Vast swaths of the country have been hit by unprecedented winter conditions, but in Texas, which runs largely on its own power grid, power outages have prompted officials to distribute soon-to-expire COVID vaccines as quickly as possible.
Texas was already facing a delayed weekly CDC vaccine shipment in preparation for the storm on Friday, said Chris Van Deusen, spokesperson for the Texas Department of Health Services. Several counties announced that vaccination sites would be closed for days in freezing conditions.
“No one wants to put the vaccine at risk by trying to deliver it under unsafe conditions,” Van Deusen told BuzzFeed News. “Local providers have postponed immunization clinics because it is not safe for people to be in much of Texas.”
In Harris County, the state’s most populous and one of the worst hit by the storm, a series of failed power events has left officials scrambling to distribute these vaccines a few hours before they expire.
The building that stored the county’s supply of Moderna vaccines lost power early Monday. Then her back-up generator broke down and the refrigerator storing the vaccines did not send a warning that her temperature had risen above the level required to keep the doses viable, county judge Lina Hidalgo told BuzzFeed. Harris County Director of Emergency Management. News.
“By the time we realized what had happened, we had about six hours to get the vaccine distributed. There were around 8,300 doses we needed to distribute,” Hidalgo said. “We couldn’t ask people to drive anywhere because the roads were totally impassable.”
Authorities quickly made a plan to find facilities with large numbers of people with medical staff capable of administering the vaccine. The county ended up distributing doses to three hospitals, the Harris County Jail – which is approaching capacity and has seen outbreaks of COVID-19 among inmates – and Rice University.
“As we have vaccines that are about to go bad, we can’t say, ‘No, we’re not going to give them to these people because they’re too young’ or whatever. else. We have to get them. in the arms, ”Hidalgo said. “Normally, when we have time and planning, we prioritize the older population, we make specific arrangements for vulnerable populations. But in this situation, it is a question of making sure that these vaccines do not go to waste ”.
Officials then heard from Moderna, who gave advice on returning vaccines to storage facilities.
Hidalgo called the rush of county officials to distribute vaccines during the storm “a miraculous effort.”
“Everyone was in a mass race,” she said. “Fortunately, not a single dose was wasted, not a single vial was wasted.”
COVID-19 screening and vaccination appointments on Tuesday have also been postponed in Austin, which continues to suffer from freezing rain. Austin public health officials did not respond to a request for comment, but said on Monday that stored vaccines would not be affected by the power outages, the US official in Austin reported.
But the statewide delay caused by the weather is further hampering Texas’ mass vaccination effort, which many residents are already frustrated with. Deployment was initially hampered by data issues that did not reflect actual immunization rates, and as eligibility increased, many older people found themselves ill-equipped to schedule appointments online.
Extremely cold temperatures are expected to last until Friday in parts of the state, but Van Deusen said the next vaccine shipment was scheduled for Wednesday at the earliest.
Hidalgo said the biggest downside to the vaccines is that the storm will have delayed vaccine distribution by at least two days.
“It’s unfortunate,” she said. “It’s time for us to distribute them.”
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