Raleigh, NC – The North Carolina Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services apologized Monday afternoon during a call to hospitals and county health departments for changes to the calculus for the distribution of coronavirus vaccines, causing some to struggle to reduce supply to balance with an increase in demand.
Dr. Mandy Cohen suggested that instead of a week-to-week allocation to the counties that prevents them from planning far ahead, the state should guarantee a minimum baseline allocation every week for the next three weeks.
“Three weeks is what definitely makes us feel comfortable,” Cohen said.
The call came after local hospitals and health departments were forced to cancel or postpone thousands of vaccination appointments statewide after a lower-than-expected allocation.
Some of the stock that the counties and hospitals are expected to have on hand in the coming weeks will instead be diverted to at least one major vaccination event that the state hopes will speed up the arms-taking process.
That event, Friday through Sunday in Charlotte at the Bank of America Stadium, could reach up to 20,000 people.
But that comes at a cost: getting supplies from hospitals and health departments that the state had just told them to speed up their own vaccination efforts.
Cohen said vaccination surgery took a double whammy this week. The state has been asking hospitals and health departments in recent weeks to speed up and get rid of a dose backlog so the federal government wouldn’t penalize the state by cutting down future shipments. But the new rate didn’t mean the state would get more than the roughly 120,000 first doses it gets each week.
“I’m sorry I’m not clearer,” Cohen said during the afternoon call. “I own that, and I apologize. It has put you all in a difficult, difficult position. ‘
The state contacts assignment numbers at the end of each week, and by the weekend it was clear that hospitals and health departments would receive less vaccine than they planned. Only Cone Health, which serves the Greensboro area, said it would cancel 10,400 appointments for the first dose.
Appointments with the second dose are not affected, according to the system.
Local health department managers wrote to Cohen Sunday, saying they would be forced to call an unknown number of people, most of them over 65, to cancel appointments.
“This after (local health departments) did exactly what they were told to do: schedule appointments, commit to individuals and get them into future slots,” the heads of the North Carolina Association of Local Health Directors said in their letter.
“Because the doses were diverted, grandmothers and grandfathers who had appointments in rural NC are now waiting,” the letter said. “Health workers who had appointments where to serve patients are now waiting.”
The State Hospital Association expressed similar frustrations, saying in its own letter to Roy Cooper government that the state needs a better distribution plan and that hospitals need more input with fewer surprises.
“Hospitals have also repeatedly run short-term to meet various urgent directives and orders from state and federal leaders, usually without prior consultation for input or clear measures of success,” the letter states. “We can and do adapt right away, but it is time for the state to take steps now to coordinate a better plan and take further steps in the deployment of vaccines.”
State officials acknowledged the frustrations and said they are trying to speed up the process, but the supply remains limited. Cohen and other top officials in the state’s vaccination effort spent about an hour on Monday’s conference call drafting the new plan, asking for feedback, and promising better communication.
Kody Kinsley, an assistant secretary at DHHS focused on pandemic response, said local providers could expect basic information on how much vaccine to expect in the next three weeks on Tuesday. Cohen said the state will take 84,000 doses of the state’s expected weekly allocations and distribute them among the counties by population, then distribute them among the suppliers in each county.
“That means that not every supplier will be able to get a vaccine,” she said. “The numbers don’t work for everyone.”
The remaining 36,000 doses the state receives each week will be used to “upgrade” organizations that can help reach marginalized communities, including rural and minority communities who are typically underserved, Cohen said.
Once local operations receive their shipments, they have five to six days to get all those doses into armament, Cohen said. Demand will continue to far outstrip supply, she said.
“We won’t be getting enough vaccine for now, I believe,” she said. ‘But we’ll get there. We work through it together. I apologize again. “