NC doesn’t know how much more COVID vaccine it will receive, seeks answers from feds
As the first doses of a COVID-19 vaccine arrive in North Carolina, state officials say they’re not getting enough information from the federal government about how much vaccine the state will receive in the future.
North Carolina expects that this week it will get 85,800 doses of the vaccine developed by Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech. But Gov. Roy Cooper said Tuesday that the state won’t know until Friday morning how much it will receive the following week.
“North Carolina and every other state still need clarity from the federal government as to how many doses of the Pfizer vaccine we’ll receive,” Cooper said in a press conference. “We’ve been told that each Friday we’ll get information about the following week’s shipment, giving the states just a few hours to direct where those shipments will go.”
Cooper said he raised the issue with Vice President Mike Pence during a conference call with other governors and asked for more time to plan. Dr. Mandy Cohen, Secretary of the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services, said she hopes the federal government will let states know earlier how much vaccine to expect.
“It’s not enough time to allow the state and providers to plan for appropriate allocations or to coordinate vaccine schedules for staff,” Cohen said during the press conference.
The first shipments of the Pfizer vaccine arrived Monday via UPS at Duke Health in Durham, Atrium Health in Charlotte and Wake Forest Baptist Health in Winston-Salem. Eight more hospitals received the vaccine Tuesday, Cooper said, and another 42 are scheduled to get their initial allotments on Thursday.
UNC Health received its first 2,925 doses on Tuesday and plans to use them to begin inoculating front-line workers at the medical center in Chapel Hill and its hospital in Hillsborough, said spokesman Alan Wolf. Additional shipments for other hospitals in the UNC system, including Rex in Raleigh, are expected later in the week, Wolf said.
The state’s plan for distributing the vaccine gives top priority to front-line hospital employees who work with and around COVID-19 patients, including doctors, nurses but also translators, transport workers and custodial staff.
The shipments this week are enough to vaccinate a fraction of these workers. UNC, for example, has identified about 9,000 employees at the medical center in Chapel Hill who would qualify for the initial doses of the vaccine under the state’s plan, Wolf said.
Moderna vaccine could be approved
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration authorized use of the Pfizer vaccine on an emergency basis late last week and is expected to do the same for a second vaccine developed by Moderna by the end of this week.
If that happens, Cooper said, the state expects to receive 175,000 doses of the Moderna vaccine next week. About half of that would go to residents and staff at nursing homes and long-term care facilities, and about half to hospitals and local health departments, Cohen said. The federal government is coordinating the distribution to nursing homes, she said.
“So we hope by the end of next week that we will be able to be in all 100 counties with some amount of vaccine,” she said. “It will be small allocations at first, but at least we’ll be able to be in more places.”
To work, both vaccines need to be administered twice — 21 days apart for Pfizer and 28 days for Moderna. State officials say all 85,800 doses received this week will be first doses and that they’ve been assured by the federal government that the second shots will arrive on time.
“This is going to get complex, because we’ll be sending out first doses and second doses as soon as a couple weeks from now,” Cohen said.
Battling COVID fatigue
Another 5,236 coronavirus cases were reported in North Carolina on Tuesday, bringing the total since the pandemic began to 446,601, according to the state Department of Health and Human Services. A record 2,735 people were hospitalized with COVID-19, including 643 in intensive care units, according to the state. Twenty-six more people have died of the disease, for a total of 5,881.
Loc Culp, the clinical manager of the COVID-19 intensive care unit at UNC Medical Center, says the recent surge in cases has stretched her fellow workers.
During a press conference Tuesday, in which she spoke of being among the first to be vaccinated at UNC, Culp described heart-wrenching cases, including brothers who both died of the disease and a husband and wife who died within days of each other. She said her colleagues are eager to be vaccinated.
“We see what happens to our COVID patients, and it’s really hard to be on the health care end watching our patients go through all this,” she said. “So the vaccine could not have come at a better time, because our patients are so sick right now and our hospitals are crowded, and it’s pretty distressing.”
More than nine months since the pandemic arrived in North Carolina, leaders are dealing with the “COVID fatigue” of compliance with statewide mandates as the virus continues to spread in every county. In November, Cooper’s administration introduced a statewide, tiered county alert system that show which counties are under the most strain from COVID-19 cases.
The state is just days into Cooper’s latest executive order, which includes a modified stay-at-home order. There is a curfew in place from 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. nightly, with exceptions for things such as work, health care and grocery shopping.
“The stakes are dire,” Cooper said a week ago, as he talked about the new restrictions. “This is truly a matter of life and death.”
The state is now seeing the results of more community spread from Thanksgiving gatherings.
Cooper and Cohen have also cautioned against potentially spreading the virus during December holiday gatherings. Hanukkah is being celebrated this week, followed by Christmas and New Year’s Eve. The 10 p.m. curfew remains in place until at least Jan. 8, when the current order expires. The state is also still under a mask mandate.
This story was originally published December 15, 2020 at 3:17 PM.
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