With North Carolina initially among the slowest states to administer coronavirus vaccines, journalists raise questions about the effectiveness of its deployment.
At a news conference on Jan. 21, a reporter asked Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Mandy Cohen how many traits had been misused or lost.
“We, as a state, do not want to waste any vaccine. We are seeing a very low number of vaccine residues recorded in our CVMS system, but they are very few, as in dozens of doses, ”Cohen replied.
The North Carolina loot number is “very small,” even “in decades?”
The state health department says it receives, on average, reports of less than 10 damaged doses per provider. However, the total number of missed doses is in the four digits, not in two.
A day after Cohen’s briefing, the North Carolina health department told the Associated Press that a total of 1,280 doses had been ruled out.
About the discrepancy
We asked the department about the comments Cohen made Thursday. Was he describing the number 1,280? Had he seen that specific figure of 1,280?
Chris Mackey, the department’s communications director, said no.
Cohen had not seen the specific total when he spoke at that Jan. 21 briefing, Mackey said, because the department did not release any reports on the figures until later. Cohen based his comments on “one-off conversations” with other health officials.
“We published a report when someone asked us to. Mandy didn’t have the number, “Mackey said in a telephone interview.” I was trying to say we haven’t seen major vaccine waste incidents. “
The 1,280 doses missed represent 0.1% of the 1.1 million doses in the state, the department said in an email.
There are 250 healthcare providers that administer the vaccines, according to the email, which means losses amount to about five doses per provider on average.
Comparison of states
It’s hard to know how North Carolina’s figures compare to other states.
The CDC has instructed states to report vaccine waste to their tracking system, agency spokeswoman Kristen Nordlund told PolitiFact. However, ProPublica reporters found that some states do not follow their damaged doses.
“We are working to find out how to provide this data online in the future when the data is more complete,” Nordlund said.
A 2019 World Health Organization report says vaccine waste is expected to be between 5% and 20% during mass vaccination campaigns.
There are reports from other states that they lost hundreds of doses in individual incidents.
Wisconsin received national attention when authorities accused a local pharmacist of deliberately destroying about 500 doses of the vaccine.
In Massachusetts, NBC News reported that a Veterans Affairs hospital lost 1,900 doses after a cleaning contractor accidentally disconnected a refrigerator. In Ohio, the Columbus Dispatch reported that a pharmacy damaged 890 doses by not storing them properly. In another case, nearly 12,000 doses were damaged on the way to Michigan after the transport truck cooled.
Our sentence
Cohen said the health department is receiving reports of “very few vaccine residues … but they are very few, as in dozens of doses.” The health department provided clarity on Cohen’s statements a day later.
It is fair to say that the rate of deterioration of the vaccine is “very small”, one tenth of 1%. Still, it was wrong for Cohen to say the number was “in the tens.” The total number was 1,280.
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