Health leader: Vaccine amounts SC receiving from feds ‘not sufficient’ to meet demand
Days after the state opened up access to COVID-19 vaccines to seniors at least 70-years-old, state health officials say some providers are having to push appointments back because they won’t have vaccines to give.
South Carolina’s top public health official said Monday the allotment of COVID-19 vaccine doses the state is receiving from the federal government is simply “not sufficient” to meet the increasing demand.
That was a key takeaway from a Monday afternoon news conference with South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control interim public health director Dr. Brannon Traxler. South Carolina has been getting about 63,000 COVID-19 doses per week.
Hospital officials across South Carolina had been hopeful that the state’s allotment of the vaccine would begin to ramp up in order to get more doses into the arms of willing recipients. But, as detailed in an email late last week from Thornton Kirby, president and CEO of the S.C. Hospital Association, South Carolina hospitals are only set to get 20-25% of the doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine they requested for this week.
“The state expects to receive the same amount of Pfizer vaccine (this) week that we have been getting, but hospital requests ... totaled four times that amount,” Kirby wrote in the email.
There are two types of COVID-19 vaccines on the market right now: One from Pfizer that is currently being administered to S.C. health care professionals, front line emergency workers and people over the age of 70; and another from Moderna, which in South Carolina is being given to residents and staff at long-term care facilities. Each of those vaccines requires an initial dose, then a second dose a few weeks later.
“At this time, the flow of vaccine from the federal government is just not sufficient to meet the growing demand,” Traxler said Monday. “States across the country are in need of more vaccine. While DHEC continues to request the most doses possible each week from the federal government, currently 100% of COVID-19 vaccines available in our state have either been given or are scheduled to be given.”
The interim public health director noted she doesn’t expect many large-scale vaccine clinics to be held frequently until more vaccine doses are made available.
“I wish we could be holding one everyday in every county,” she said. “But until there is more vaccine coming into South Carolina, we just don’t have the doses to be able to do that.”
Traxler added that DHEC is “aware that some vaccine providers are having to reschedule or push back appointments due to the limited supply” of vaccine in the state. She said vaccine providers should contact residents directly if they need to reschedule an appointment. DHEC did not offer specifics about how many providers or appointments will be affected.
South Carolina has received 317,975 total vaccine doses, as of Monday, per state health department data. Of those, 163,800 have been administered.
With the Pfizer vaccine, there have been 200,075 total doses received, with 108,590 first doses and 29,201 second doses administered. DHEC reports that 208,607 appointments for the Pfizer vaccine have been made, and that number doesn’t include third-party providers.
Meanwhile, the Palmetto State has received 117,900 doses of the Moderna vaccine, and 26,009 of those have, so far, been given to residents or staff at state long-term care facilities.
This story was originally published January 18, 2021 at 3:57 PM with the headline "Health leader: Vaccine amounts SC receiving from feds ‘not sufficient’ to meet demand."
