The city of Memphis plans to administer 40,000 to 50,000 doses of COVID per week, three or four times the current level, and do so quickly and efficiently.
It is investigating a large call center run by students at the University of Memphis for telephone appointments and will take online appointments within a few weeks through a state-run system that will plan the first and second doses simultaneously.
The city of Memphis accepts this responsibility soberly. We do not take it lightly, “Mayor Jim Strickland told reporters late Tuesday afternoon, February 23.
“Our mission to vaccinate as many people as possible as quickly is crucial to keeping the virus under control and returning to normal as soon as possible.”
More than 2400 doses remained on seven separate occasions. It also had 51,000 doses in stock, including 30,000 that had already been administered.
These doses, which will expire in early March, are expected to make a major effort this week to vaccinate 40,000 people, including about 10,000 teachers.
Next week, Shelby County will receive 13,700 first doses.
One of the questions for the new team, Doug McGowen, chief operating officer of City of Memphis, said how to share the offer per partner to best cover the country, including doses for private pharmacies and health clinics.
“It’s about accountability, transparency and tracking our performance,” he said. ‘We do it today in the areas we operate.
By mid-March, when Pfizer’s increased production begins and the Johnson & Johnson vaccine may receive emergency permits, the province could receive 30,000 to 40,000 doses a week.
McGowen said it was “where we need to be to get people vaccinated by this summer.”
What citizens should pay attention to right away, Strickland said, is effectively in-and-out on the sites, though they will be reporting through the SignUpGenius site for at least a few more weeks.
Tiffany Collins, city deputy director of General Services, and the point guard at city-run vaccination sites waited about an hour at Pipkin on Tuesday.
“We saw the waiting time average about 20 minutes,” Collins said Tuesday afternoon. ‘And if you were there now, there would probably be no line, no guard. We vaccinated more than 800 people, and it’s four o’clock. ”
Pipkin had 1,200 appointments on Tuesday, “and we limit the average waiting time from hours on end to less than half an hour.”
The city and the University of Tennessee Health Science Center have been jointly managing the Appling City Cove site since mid-January without long periods or to turn people away.
The partners said early on that people could only arrive one hour before appointments. If they were earlier, they were dismissed. Appointments were checked; people without them are not allowed.
The Appling operation also liaises with people in line to get information about the vaccine so that the delays do not occur within the former vehicle inspection station.
Strickland said it is not clear if the city will have more sites, including smaller pop-up sites.
“What we are trying to do is make it a seamless transition next week after ten days, to administer the doses properly in the three places we manage and work with the state,” he said.
The vaccination system has so far been led by the Shelby County Health Department, a provincial government agency.
Strickland chose his words carefully when asked how he felt when he heard about the amount of wasted doses.
‘I’m obviously disappointed. I do not understand all the reasons, “he said.
Last week, the director of the health department, Alisa Haushalter, said 1300 doses had been wasted. The state said Tuesday the actual number was 2,400.
Aside from the magnitude of the loss, Strickland says the city now “needs to get its arms around how many doses there are, and get the shots as soon as possible.”
James Dixon, a citizen, says Lee Harris, mayor of Shelby County, ‘I think all the residents of Shelby County have failed.
“Why did it take so long to remove the Shelby County Department of Health from the vaccination process?” he asked by email.
Strickland said he was “really concerned” about whether the city should have been asked earlier.
‘What we are trying to do together is to make sure that the operations run smoothly in the future. It’s still a team effort. The health department has another role to play. “They are still the leader in the overall pandemic,” Strickland said.