With $208M on the line, SC House tells DHEC vaccine plan must weigh poverty, race
SC House lawmakers want the state’s lead health department to change how it plans to allocate COVID-19 vaccines when they arrive to the state.
The SC House on Wednesday voted 116-1 to spend $208 million to speed up the state’s ability to give people the COVID-19 vaccine, while also calling on the Department of Health and Environmental Control to allocate vaccines on a regional basis as rather than on a county basis.
Legislators want DHEC to take into account poverty levels, infection rates, age and high-risk populations.
DHEC’s board on Tuesday approved a plan to distribute vaccines to counties on a per capita basis without taking into account the age of people in an area or race and socioeconomic statuses.
Under the House proposal, the regions would follow DHEC’s four public health regions: the Upstate, the Midlands, the Pee Dee and the Lowcountry.
When making the allocations to vaccine providers, DHEC will need to consider recommendations from regional advisory panels comprised of local providers who will take into account what areas are receiving vaccines, what areas aren’t, and what distribution plans are working.
“We’re giving DHEC all the flexibility they need,” said state Rep. Murrell Smith, R-Sumter. “But we’re making sure they have all the information they need because South Carolina is a unique state, and it’s not one size fits all for everybody.”
State Rep. Wendy Brawley, D-Richland, said DHEC needs to make sure the vaccine is made available to minority and rural communities and wants that data to be collected.
“I really hope that DHEC is not only planning better to do that, because right now that has been lacking, but hope they’re also keeping track of the numbers of vaccines that go into Black arms,” Brawley said. ”The data has got to tell us whether or not we’re doing a good job.”
Brawley said having vaccines allocated on a regional approach would help with equity issues.
“The regional approach, as they identified, had some opportunities for people to sit locally on various parts of the process, where with the county (approach), the vaccine was just coming into the county and the people who had the most political clout would probably get access without looking at rural parts of the county,” Brawley said.
DHEC didn’t immediately comment on the regional approach proposed by House lawmakers.
Earlier on Wednesday, while speaking to reporters, Gov. Henry McMaster said the per capita basis is the simplest way to allocate vaccine doses.
“The easiest way to keep it very simple so there’s no misunderstanding is to do it the way that the federal government does it, and that is strictly on the basis of population,” McMaster said. “To do it by population is a (way) that everyone understands and you don’t get into questions into what factors are more important.”
$208 million to get shots into arms
The vaccine relief bill, which still must pass the Senate, sets aside $208 million to help expand the state’s capacity to give people the vaccine.
Money would go to the Department of Health and Environmental Control, the Medical University of South Carolina, hospitals around the state and other vaccine providers, and would be available to pay for staff to give the vaccine, personal protective equipment, contact tracing, marketing campaigns, transportation and storage, technology and costs associated with running large-scale community vaccination sites, among other things.
State officials want to set up a framework to give people vaccines quickly and when the supply is widely available in South Carolina.
“This has been affecting the quality of life of all citizens of the state of South Carolina, the urban areas and rural areas, and everywhere in between needs to get their citizens vaccinated,” Smith said Tuesday. “We need to move forward and we need to get this economy and our way of life back to normal over here and the way we’re going to do it is by getting people vaccinated.”
DHEC officials have said they plan to have 46 vaccinations teams around the state.
The number of teams will ramp up as more vaccine is available in the state. They will be deployed to maximize vaccinations around the state especially in rural and underserved communities, said Laura Renwick, a spokeswoman for DHEC.
“These teams won’t be necessarily assigned solely to one particular county but they will be used to improve access in all 46 counties,” Renwick said in an email.
Vaccinations are being made available to residents and staff in long-term care facilities, front line health workers, people 70 years and older, and patients in hospitals who are at least 65 years old.
According to DHEC’s vaccine plans, law enforcement, corrections officers, teachers, grocery store workers, manufacturing workers, and day care workers would receive the vaccine in early spring.
In the late spring, anyone 65 and older, and people 16 to 64 with certain medical conditions would be eligible for the vaccine. Also, transportation workers, non front line health care workers and food service workers would be eligible.
Widespread availability for anyone who wants to be vaccinated would take place in the summer through fall, under the current schedule.
In order to vaccinate people, the state needs doses to give.
McMaster speaking to reporters on Wednesday, said he’s confident supply will increase in the coming months as more vaccine manufacturers come online.
“From the beginning, the flow has been steady. It has been what was promised by the Trump administration,” McMaster said. “General (Gustave) Perna is still on the team. He is the one who’s explaining the increase based on the manufacturers, but we’re not going get more than our share, per population, but we’re going to get more for that population. Every time the manufacturing ability increases, that’s going to increase how much we get.”
Reporter Zak Koeske contributed to this article.
This story was originally published January 27, 2021 at 5:45 PM.
