COLUMBIA – Delays in new shipments of COVID-19 vaccines are forcing several major South Carolina hospitals to reschedule appointments and stop accepting new ones.
The setback comes as a result of changes in delivery plans that result in fewer vaccine doses and the dispatch of drug manufacturers coming later in the week, according to hospital systems in South Carolina.
Prisma Health, the state’s largest healthcare provider, found this week that it was shifting doses back and forth between major vaccinations in the Upstate and Midlands when deliveries did not arrive as expected on 9 February. The shipment from the previous day also had fewer doses than expected, said dr. Saria Saccocio, co-leader of the Prisma Health Vaccination Task, said.
Automated phone calls went to seniors as many appointments had to be canceled, although Saccocio did not have exactly the number of people.
“The result is a very complicated matter in terms of scheduling,” said Dr. Danielle Scheurer, chief quality officer at the Medical University of the South Carolina Health System, said in an online report. ‘How do you patients plan to get a vaccine with a clear conscience if you’m not even sure you’ll get it? We literally do not know what we get week to week before we open the box. ”
MUSC spokeswoman Heather Woolwine also acknowledged on February 9 that the hospital system may need to change the planned vaccine appointments. She said MUSC Health apologizes to patients for the “inconvenience and frustration that the rescheduling of 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 apply is what we get, and at the moment we just don’t get much,” she said.
This is not the first time that doses have run out.
Thousands of appointments had to be canceled last month when 70 and older were just eligible and hospitals made appointments based on the mistaken assumption that their future delivery offer would be much larger.
The latest delays come the same week that South Carolina expanded vaccine admission to 309,000 seniors aged 65 to 69.
Now that so many people need second doses, the first doses and boosters come in separate shipments, the state Department of Health and Environmental Control explained. Previously, South Carolina did not use all of its second doses each week, so it was used again for the first doses, as Governor Henry McMaster urged hospitals to empty their shelves.
“The day the next consignment arrives, the old consignment should be in someone’s arm,” he said.
The trend has now reversed and two-thirds of the shots given at Prisma are for those who need their follow-up dose.
DHEC said they are urging hospitals to hold regular mass clinics that could exceed a facility’s weekly dose allocation until the vaccines become more available.
Dr. Robert Oliverio, CEO of Roper St. Francis Physician Partners, said the hospital system had interrupted to schedule any new appointments for COVID-19 vaccines to ensure existing appointments were met by mid-March.
“If the supply of vaccines decreases significantly, that could change,” he said.
The hospital system can also use first doses as second doses to ensure that everyone who has already received the first dose can receive their second dose.
“We walk week to week,” Oliverio said. ‘We’ll probably be fine until next Tuesday or Wednesday. But it really depends on what comes on the truck.
On the other hand, hospitals like Bon Secours St. Francis in Greenville and the Conway Medical Center along the Grand Strand that they have enough doses to vaccinate everyone who currently has an appointment.
Tidelands Health, which operates two clinics in Murrells Inlet and Georgetown, has received 1,000 doses over the past two weeks – far from its original 2,000 hopefuls and even beyond its 5,000-week capacity.
According to Gayle Resetar, chief operating officer of Tidelands Health, the unpredictability of the delivery kept staff on track. Specialists arrange 1,000 appointments per week, and when more supply is on the way, staff work all weekend to deplete the remaining doses.
As of Feb. 9, Tidelands had a waiting list of 19,000, and Resetar reckons it will take at least two months before they can serve the expanded pool of 65 to 69 years.
So far, the service provider does not have to cancel any appointments, as a second dose of doses for 70-and-older is underway this week.
‘There was so much news and anxiety that even though they knew they had an appointment, they were all willing to possibly call us and say we had not received it. But we have, ‘said Resetar.
Prisma also caused a problem this week, Prisma said after an increase in demand from newly registered seniors led to the hospital system interrupting the practice.
“The 65- to 69-year-old group showed up in overwhelming numbers, and we’d exhausted all our inlet supplies for this week,” Saccocio said.
The hospital system will still accept access for people without appointments who need a second dose, as long as it is 26 days since their first admission was received. Prisma expects to receive its delayed shipment on Feb. 10, and another with promotions dose Feb. 11, Saccocio said.
Meanwhile, more sites are being added to reach people in rural areas.
Charleston County and Fetter Health Care Network begin Feb. 16 on a first-come-first-served basis from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Paul’s / Hollywood Library in Hollywood. Anthony Poole, clinical chief and quality officer of Fetter Health Care Network, said his team is willing to give between 800 and 1,000 doses.
A total of 1.3 million South Carolina residents are on the fitness list, which already includes elderly people aged 70 and older, health workers of all kinds and long-term residents.
As of Monday, nearly 471,000 South Carolinans had received at least their initial shot, and according to DHEC, more than 410,000 doses had been reserved by appointment.
The announcement also comes on a day that lawmakers have resumed the debate on how to vaccinate educators without bumping elderly people out of their appointments, with the aim of getting students back in the classroom on a full, five-day week across the school to get before the school year is over.
DHEC officials said the only way to shoot more than 71,000 K-12 workers into the weapon who now want to roll up their sleeves was to divert all doses for two weeks after the attempt, and cancel the time life for vaccines . appointments.
Jessica Holdman and Seanna Adcox reported from Columbia and Lauren Sausser of Charleston. Shamira McCray contributed by Charleston, Nick Masuda of Myrtle Beach and Natalie Walters of Greenville.