SC reserving Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine for nursing home residents, staff
South Carolina long-term care facility residents and staff could begin receiving COVID-19 vaccinations by the final week of December, state health officials said Friday.
Long-term care facility residents, who have been prioritized for vaccination due to their vulnerability to the novel coronavirus, should expect to receive their first shots in the next three to six weeks, state Department of Health and Environmental Control immunization chief Stephen White said.
Residents of nursing homes and assisted living facilities have been disproportionately affected by COVID-19, which as of November had killed nearly 100,000 such individuals in the United States, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
In South Carolina, long-term care facility residents account for about 3% of the state’s roughly 250,000 COVID-19 cases, but more than 35% of its virus deaths, data show.
Facility residents are particularly susceptible to the virus because of their often advanced age and underlying medical conditions, as well as their communal living arrangements.
In the coming weeks, pharmacy teams from CVS and Walgreens will coordinate and administer vaccinations at South Carolina’s nursing homes and assisted living facilities as part of a federal program overseen by the CDC, DHEC said.
The state health agency has to date dedicated roughly 104,000 doses of the Moderna vaccine for use at long-term care facilities, but is not otherwise involved in planning or carrying out the vaccination effort.
The CDC did not respond to a request for comment on its pharmacy partnership program or its plans for facilitating the vaccination of South Carolina nursing home and assisted living facility residents and staff.
The federal agency’s website says the vaccination program will be free to long-term care facilities and that CVS and Walgreens would provide “end-to-end management of the COVID-19 vaccination process, including cold chain management, on-site vaccinations, and fulfillment of reporting requirements.”
Staff at long-term care facilities who have not already received the COVID-19 vaccine can get it as part of the initiative.
CVS spokeswoman Tara Burke said starting Monday the company would be coordinating vaccinations at more than 40,000 long-term care facilities across the country.
“Bottom line, we’re prepared to play a critical role in the vaccination process utilizing our vast experience and army of trained health care professionals,” she said, adding that CVS pharmacists are well-acquainted with the long-term care facility population because they run seasonal flu clinics at thousands of nursing homes and assisted living centers each year.
The pharmacy giant will use a “hub and spoke” model, storing vaccines at retail locations based on geographic need so that pharmacy teams can pick up doses as necessary on their way to long-term care facilities.
“We’ll know how much we need for each facility and bring extra for new residents or staff members who may not have been included in the data that was shared in advance,” Burke said.
A Walgreens spokeswoman said the company would be handling vaccinations at approximately 35,000 long-term care facilities across the country, but that she could not share state-specific details about the program at this time.
“Walgreens has the pharmacist expertise, data and reporting infrastructure, cold storage capacity and nationwide footprint required to manage the complexities of administering a COVID-19 vaccine,” the company said in a statement.
While DHEC is not directly involved in coordinating the vaccination effort at long-term care facilities, state health officials were responsible for selecting which of the two early COVID-19 vaccines would be administered to long-term care facility residents.
For logistical reasons — namely that it doesn’t require ultra-cold storage like the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine — DHEC chose the Moderna vaccine, which received emergency use authorization late Friday and could make it to South Carolina by early next week.
“It’s a frozen product that can be stored for up to 30 days, and so this would give those facilities, which are going to be mobile, more ability or better ability to transport those doses,” White said. “We felt that it would be easier for the facilities and easier on the partnership to handle and minimize waste.”
Moderna’s vaccine, like Pfizer-BioNTech’s, requires two separate shots spaced weeks apart.
As of Wednesday, all of South Carolina’s 193 skilled nursing facilities and all but five of the state’s 489 community residential care facilities were enrolled in the federal vaccination program, DHEC spokeswoman Laura Renwick said.
She declined to share which five facilities had chosen not to participate in the vaccination effort.
Ellen Imperial, director of clinical services for Presbyterian Communities of South Carolina, which operates six long-term care facilities in the state, said all would be participating in the federal vaccination program.
Imperial said three of the facilities are tentatively scheduled to receive a visit from CVS pharmacists on Dec. 30, while the other three have tentative resident and staff vaccination dates set for early in the new year.
She said the plan is for all residents and staff who want to be vaccinated to receive their first shots on those days.
CVS health care professionals would then return 28 days later to administer booster shots to everyone who’d already received their first dose and provide initial doses to any new residents or staff. The pharmacists would then return a third and final time, 28 days after their second visit, to provide boosters to the second group of vaccine recipients, Imperial said.
She said a “large percentage” of the roughly 2,000 residents and staff that are spread between Presbyterian’s six communities have expressed interest in receiving the vaccine.
As of Tuesday, 182, or nearly 27%, of the state’s long-term care facilities had reported one or more coronavirus cases among residents and staff within the past two weeks, according to DHEC.
This story was originally published December 19, 2020 at 5:00 AM.