COLUMBIA – Delays in new shipments of COVID-19 vaccines are forcing several major South Carolina hospitals to reschedule appointments and not accept new ones.
The setback is as changes to delivery plans mean fewer vaccine doses and shipments from drug manufacturers arrive later in the week, according to South Carolina Hospital Systems.
Prisma Health, the state’s largest health care provider, noticed this week that doses were shifted back and forth between major vaccination sites in the Upstate and Midlands when the deliveries did not arrive on February 9 as expected. The previous day’s shipment also came with fewer doses than expected, said Dr. Saria Saccocio, co-leader of the Prisma Health vaccine task force.
Automated calls were made to seniors because many appointments had to be canceled, even though Saccocio did not have an exact number of people affected.
“The result is a very complex issue when it comes to planning,” said Dr. Danielle Scheurer, Chief Quality Officer of the Medical University of South Carolina Health System, in an online post. ‘How do you, in good conscience, plan patients for a vaccine if you’re not even sure you’ll get it? We literally don’t know what we’re getting from week to week until we open that box. “
MUSC spokeswoman Heather Woolwine also acknowledged on Feb. 9 that the hospital system may need to change scheduled vaccine appointments. She said MUSC Health apologizes to patients for the “inconvenience and frustration that moving appointments can cause.”
Scheurer said MUSC is pushing as many appointments as possible to later in the week and has frozen all new appointments.
“All we can manage is what we get, and we just don’t get much right now,” she said.
This is not the first time that doses have run out.
Thousands of appointments had to be canceled last month when those 70 and older were newly qualified and hospitals made appointments based on the erroneous assumption that their future stock shipments would be much larger.
The latest delays come in the same week that South Carolina extended vaccination entitlement to 309,000 seniors between the ages of 65 and 69.
With so many people needing second doses, first doses and boosters are arriving in separate shipments, the State Department of Health and Environmental Control explained. South Carolina used to not use all the second doses every week, so they were reused for the first doses when Governor Henry McMaster urged hospitals to empty their shelves.
“The day the next shipment arrives, the old shipment should be in someone’s arm,” he said.
Now the trend has reversed and two thirds of the injections given at Prisma are for those who need their follow-up dose.
DHEC said it urges hospitals not to maintain regular mass clinics that could exceed a facility’s weekly assigned dose until vaccines are more widely available.
Dr. Robert Oliverio, CEO of Roper St. Francis Physician Partners, said the hospital system has paused the scheduling of new appointments for COVID-19 vaccines to ensure that existing commitments made through mid-March are honored.
“If the vaccine supply falls significantly, that could change,” he said.
The hospital system may also resort to using first doses as the second dose to ensure that anyone who has already received the first dose can have their second.
“We run from week to week,” said Oliverio. ‘It will probably be fine next Tuesday or Wednesday. But it really depends on what gets on 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 – far from its original hope of 2,000 and even further from its 5,000-a-week capacity.
According to Gayle Resetar, Tidelands Health’s Chief Operating Officer, the unpredictability of what will be delivered has kept the planning staff on standby. Specialists line up 1,000 appointments per week, and if more supplies are on the way, staff work all weekend to eat the remaining doses.
On February 9, Tidelands had a waiting list of 19,000 and Resetar believes it will take at least two months before they can serve the expanded pool of 65-69 years.
So far, the provider has not had to cancel appointments, because a second round of dosing for people over 70 is on the way this week.
“There is so much news and fear that even though they knew they had an appointment, they were all prepared that we might call them and say we didn’t understand. But we did, ”Resetar said.
Walk-ins also caused a problem this week, Prisma said, after a wave of demand from newly qualified seniors that prompted the hospital system to interrupt the practice.
“The 65- to 69-year-old group showed up in overwhelming numbers, and we’ve exhausted all of our run-in vaccines for this week,” Saccocio said.
The hospital system still accepts walk-ins for people without an appointment who require a second dose as long as it has been 26 days since they received their first injection. Prisma expects to receive its delayed shipment on Feb. 10, and another booster dose on Feb. 11, Saccocio said.
In the meantime, more sites are being added to reach people in rural areas.
Charleston County and Fetter Health Care Network will begin vaccinations on a first-come, first-served basis from 9:00 am to 2:00 pm at the St. Paul’s / Hollywood Library in Hollywood on Feb. 16. Anthony Poole, Chief Clinical and Quality Officer for Fetter Health Care Network, said his team will be willing to give between 800 and 1,000 doses.
A total of 1.3 million South Carolina people are on the eligibility list, including already seniors 70 and older, health workers of all types and long-term residents.
According to DHEC, nearly 471,000 South Carolina people had at least received their first injection on Monday and more than 410,000 doses were reserved through appointments.
The announcement also came on a day when lawmakers are resuming debate on how to vaccinate educators without knocking seniors off their appointments, with the goal of getting students back in the classroom for a full, statewide, five-day week before the school year. essentially over.
DHEC officials have said the only way to get shots in the arms of the more than 71,000 K-12 employees statewide willing to roll up their sleeves now is to take all doses for two weeks. to the effort, through time slots for vaccines reserved by appointments.
Jessica Holdman and Sean Adcox reported from Columbia and Lauren Sausser from Charleston. Shamira McCray contributed from Charleston, Nick Masuda from Myrtle Beach and Natalie Walters from Greenville.