Federal authorities rolled to Shelby County, Tennessee, this week when the mismanagement disasters plaguing the local deployment of the coronavirus vaccine reached a boiling point.
The province’s health department has allowed more than 2,000 doses to be spoiled, two children have been vaccinated against the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) guidelines, and a volunteer has allegedly kicked off doses in one place. The Tennessee Department of Health, the FBI and the CDC are now investigating. The head of the Shelby department of health, Alisa Haushalter, resigned on Friday.
Now residents are left with the question of whether the doses they received were expired doses.
‘You’re starting to feel safe doing things, but now you do not know if you’re covered or not. You do not know if the shot you received is effective or not, “said Gayle Jones, 80, who was born and raised in Cordova, Tennessee. She received her second admission of the Pfizer vaccine on Wednesday. “We missed an entire year by staying home. We finally felt we could get out and maybe be OK. ‘
Hundreds of people echoed her statements on Facebook in comments on health department bulletins.
Ingrid Chilton, 68, expressed her frustration under one post: “Let’s talk about the thousands of Memphians who do not know if they were properly vaccinated, as the thawing of the vaccines was not done according to the CDC guidelines!”
Chilton and her 75-year-old husband flew from their home in Tiburon, California, to visit their son in downtown Memphis for two weeks at the end of February 2020. They stayed for a year and lived in the same two weeks of clothes. Saturday would be the day they reached full immunity, two weeks after their second Pfizer blows. She and her husband started discussing when they would return to Tiburon.
“Today was the day I celebrated my birthday, like ‘We’re free! ‘and instead we get it. I feel like we’re in the limbo again, ”she told The Daily Beast.
The state began investigating the health department last week, after the province allowed 1,300 doses to expire in February. State investigators found that 2,400 doses actually went bad this month and were thrown in the trash, while 840 were wasted in one day on February 15th. Although the vaccines require ultra-cold storage to remain viable, some syringes felt warm to the researcher. the Tennessean report.
Some doses have disappeared. State Health Commissioner, dr. Lisa Piercey, told a news conference on Friday that 12 syringes expired during a vaccination event on February 23, but no one returned them to the distribution pharmacy. The doses remain unexplained.
“There seems to be a lack of accountability and, in a sense, leadership, which has undoubtedly harmed some people and possibly withheld the vaccine from people who needed it,” Piercey said.
Jones was hoping to feel safe attending the afterbirth of two great-grandchildren. She thinks she will still go, even if now with feelings of uncertainty and risk. Her daughter, her son and two of her grandchildren all had COVID-19. A granddaughter and a granddaughter are both pregnant and working in health care.
‘We’ll have to accept it as it is. “I do not know if they will be able to prove whether the vaccine we received was real and effective,” she said.
Chilton will postpone her trip until the investigation into the vaccination attempt is completed.
“I do not know if we will ever know exactly whether we will be protected,” she said.
The Memphis Department of Health has taken over the vaccination efforts for the entire province.
In addition to the procedural problems, the vaccination attempt suffered an alleged robbery. The state notified the FBI on Thursday that a volunteer allegedly stole the vaccine doses on Feb. 3, according to Piercey. The state health commissioner said the city had no information on the disappearance of the doses. Shelby County Administrative Chief Dwan Gilliom said Piercey was wrong and that law enforcement officers were made aware of it, but that no arrests were made.
According to Piercey, there was also a vaccination on February 3 in Shelby County. The Moderna or Pfizer vaccine is not approved for persons under the age of 16, as the drug has only been tested on adults.
The mess has toppled Jones’ already cratering confidence in local government, which has struggled over the past week to pick up rubbish and deliver water to residents.
“They just have to get on with the Memphis government. “They are completely unreliable,” Jones said. ‘We only let the water boil for 8 days because all the mains broke. You just have to think, ‘Oh woe, can you do nothing?’ ‘
Chilton feels that way too.
“I do not think my feelings towards the Department of Health and State Health will be honest,” she said.