RALEIGH, NC (AP) – North Carolina’s leading public health official said Tuesday that most nursing home workers are refusing to take coronavirus vaccines offered in a condition that has now become one of the slowest in the country to deliver doses. to get people’s arms.
In an interview with The Associated Press, Mandy Cohen, secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, attributed some inertia to the shortage of staff, lack of familiarity with the state’s technological systems and logistical barriers to dealing with dozens people work together. hospitals and 100 different provinces across the state.
Her comments come shortly after the governor announced Tuesday that members of the National Guard would be deployed to speed up the administration of doses.
“We have a decentralized system in North Carolina,” Cohen said. ‘We have 83 local public health departments, and we have 100 provinces. We are proud of it, but if you decentralize things, it does create inertia. We try to find the right balance to recognize the strengths in our local area, but also to realize where the challenges are. ”
Roy Cooper, the newly re-elected Democratic governor of North Carolina, wrote on Twitter that it is the top priority to ensure that vaccines are given to individuals. “
“We will use all necessary resources and personnel,” Cooper wrote. “I have mobilized the NC National Guard to provide support to local health care providers as we continue to increase the rate of vaccinations.”
The North Carolina National Guard said in a news release that it has mobilized about 50 personnel in support of the expected request requests from state partners and health departments in the country. The Guard will be operational this week, according to the news release.
Nearly 110,000 people in North Carolina received their first dose on Tuesday morning, according to data from the Department of Health. Nearly 500 people received a second dose.
The administration of initial doses has so far been less than 1% of the population of 10.5 million people. Data collected and shared by US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention put North Carolina on Monday as the sixth worst state in the state in the first dose of vaccinations per capita. Kansas, Georgia, Mississippi, Alabama and Arizona were worse.
Cohen noted that the hesitation of vaccines among long-term care workers is ‘worrying’, given the anecdotal reports the state has collected so far. North Carolina is working with Walgreens and CVS, which is responsible for vaccinating residents and workers in long-term care facilities, to access and report concrete data. She believes North Carolina is experiencing something similar to an estimate that Mike DeWine, the Ohio government, made last week, pointing out that about 60% of staff in long-term care institutions have refused the vaccination.
“I warn that it’s anecdotal, but we’re definitely hearing that more than half (the vaccine) is declining, and that’s worrying,” Cohen said.
According to the state’s COVID dashboard, nearly 166,000 vaccine doses have been allocated to long-term care facilities as of Monday. Of these, 13 338 doses were administered.
Yet demand in the state is much higher than the available weekly supply of 120,000 doses North Carolina expects to receive from President Donald Trump’s government this month.
Cohen said some of the National Guard members will serve as inmates, while other local health departments will help with logistical processes to get people to websites and ensure they stay masked and physically away from each other.
Hospital workers were the first in line to receive doses, and some remain unvaccinated due to their limited supply. As of Wednesday, a small number of provinces will start administering doses to the elderly aged 75 or older.
The high demand has raised concerns about fairness and equity, especially as some local health departments are asking residents to make an appointment online. Appointments can fill up quickly and those with less digital skills or living in rural communities without broadband access may lag behind.
“We still have structural inequalities in our system that are only built into how we function as a government (and) how we work as a medical system,” Cohen said. ‘There are people who have access and who do not. I think we need to recognize it and then build systems that can try to overcome it. ”
Although health officials in North Carolina have been slow to get doses of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines into residents’ arms, there are similar problems in other states.
By the end of December, federal health officials are well short of their goal of vaccinating 20 million Americans. The CDC said On Tuesday, more than 17 million doses were distributed, and 4.8 million people received a first dose.
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Follow the AP coverage of the virus outbreak at https://apnews.com/VirusOutbreak and https://apnews.com/UnderstandingtheOutbreak
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Follow Anderson on Twitter https://twitter.com/BryanRAnderson.
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Anderson is a corps member for the Associated Press / Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a non-profit national service program that puts journalists in local newsrooms to report on national issues.