COLUMBIA – Delays in new COVID-19 vaccine shipments are forcing several large hospitals in South Carolina to reschedule appointments and stop accepting new ones.
The setback comes as changes to delivery plans lead to fewer vaccine doses and shipments from drug manufacturers arrive later in the week, according to South Carolina hospital systems.
Prisma Health, the state’s largest healthcare provider, this week found itself switching doses between major vaccination sites in the Upstate and Midlands when deliveries did not arrive on Feb. 9 as expected. The previous day’s shipment also came with fewer doses than planned, said Dr. Saria Saccocio, co-leader of the Prisma Health vaccine working group.
Automatic phone calls were directed at seniors as many appointments had to be canceled, although Saccocio did not have an exact number of people affected.
“The result is a really complex problem when it comes to scheduling,” Dr. Danielle Scheurer, head of quality health care at South Carolina Medical University, said in an online post. “How, with good conscience, do you plan for patients to be vaccinated when you are not even sure if you will have it? We literally don’t know what we will get week after week until we open this box. “
MUSC spokeswoman Heather Woolwine also acknowledged on Feb. 9 that the hospital system may need to change scheduled vaccine appointments. He said MUSC Health apologizes to patients for the “discomfort and frustration that scheduling appointments can cause.”
Scheurer said MUSC is pushing as many appointments as possible over the weekend and has frozen all new appointments.
“All we can manage is what we are given and right now we don’t get much of it,” he said.
This is not the first time the doses have run out.
Thousands of appointments had to be canceled last month when the 70-year-old or older had just been eligible and hospitals were taking appointments based on the incorrect assumption that their future supply shipments would be much larger.
The latest delays come the same week that South Carolina expanded vaccine eligibility to 309,000 people over the age of 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 they were reused for the first doses, as Gov. Henry McMaster urged hospitals to empty the shelves.
“The day the next shipment arrives, the old shipment should be in someone’s arm,” he said.
Now the trend has been reversed and two-thirds of the shots being made at Prisma are for those who need their follow-up dose.
DHEC said it urges hospitals not to hold regular mass clinics that may exceed a facility’s weekly dose allocation until vaccines are more available.
Dr. Robert Oliverio, CEO of Roper St. Francis Physician Partners said the hospital system has stopped scheduling new appointments for COVID-19 vaccines to ensure existing appointments made through mid-March will be honored.
“If the supply of vaccines decreases considerably, that can change,” he said.
The hospital system can also use the first dose as a second dose to ensure that everyone who has already received the first dose can get the second.
“We’re running week after week,” Oliverio said. “We will probably be fine until next Tuesday or Wednesday. But it really depends on what comes out of the truck.
On the other hand, hospitals like Bon Secours St. Francis of Greenville and Conway Medical Center along Grand Strand say they have enough doses to vaccinate anyone who has an appointment.
Tidelands Health, which operates two clinics in Murrells Inlet and Georgetown, has received 1,000 doses in each of the past two weeks, far from its original expectation of 2,000 and even further from its capacity of 5,000 per week.
The unpredictability of what will be delivered has kept staff scheduling on hold, according to Gayle Resetar, chief operating officer of Tidelands Health. Specialists schedule 1,000 appointments per week, and if there is more supply en route, staff work all weekend to exhaust the remaining doses.
As of Feb. 9, Tidelands had a waiting list of 19,000 and Reset believes it will be at least two months before they can serve the expansion of people aged 65 to 69.
So far, the provider has not had to cancel any appointments, as a second round of dosing is being prepared this week for those aged 70 and over.
“There was so much news and anguish that even though they knew they had an appointment, they were all prepared that we would possibly call them and say we didn’t get it. But we did,” Resetar said.
Accessories also caused a problem this week, Prisma said, following rising demand for eligible seniors that caused the hospital system to stop practicing.
“The 65- to 69-year-old group showed up in an overwhelming number and we have exhausted all vaccine supply for this week,” Saccocio said.
The hospital system will still accept consultations for those without an appointment who need a second dose, as long as 26 days have passed since they received the first shot. Prism expects to receive its delayed shipment on Feb. 10 and another containing booster doses on Feb. 11, Saccocio said.
Meanwhile, more places are being added to reach people living in rural areas.
Charleston County and the Fetter Health Care Network will begin vaccination on Feb. 16 in order of arrival and arrival from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. at St. Louis Library. Paul’s / Hollywood Hollywood. Anthony Poole, chief clinician and quality officer for the Fetter Health Care Network, said his team will be ready to give between 800 and 1,000 doses.
In all, 1.3 million South Carolinians are on the eligibility list, which already included seniors 70 and older, health care workers of all kinds, and long-term care residents.
As of Monday, nearly 471,000 South Carolina had received at least their initial shot and more than 410,000 doses were reserved by appointment, according to the DHEC.
The announcement also came on a day when lawmakers resumed the debate on how to vaccinate educators without neglecting seniors, with the goal of returning students to the classroom for a full five-day week. the state before the end of the school year.
DHEC officials have said the only way to get shots in the arms of the more than 71,000 K-12 employees across the state willing to roll up their sleeves now would be to divert all doses for two weeks to the effort, canceling time slots for appointment-only vaccines.
Jessica Holdman i Sean Adcox reported from Columbia i Lauren Sausser of Charleston. Shamira McCray contributed by Charleston, Nick Masuda of Myrtle Beach i Natalie Walters of Greenville.