NC parents, teens lined up to get 3rd COVID shot. Some got less vaccine than expected.
Updated: The story was updated at 4:45 p.m. Wednesday with additional information from the Orange County Health Department.
Health officials said fewer than 35 teenagers received the wrong dosage of a Pfizer COVID-19 booster shot last week during a vaccination clinic at Cedar Ridge High School in Hillsborough.
The Orange County Health Department contacted StarMed Healthcare, the vendor that helped to administer the shots, after hearing about a parent’s concerns about the dosage, said Kristin Prelipp, Health Department spokeswoman, in an email to The News & Observer Monday. The teens received a pediatric dosage, which is less than they should have received, officials said.
“A Nurse Practitioner believed he was giving the accurate dosing to the patients and later realized he had given the pediatric dosing rather than the adult dosing,” Prelipp said in an updated release Wednesday.
The nurse practitioner has been suspended pending more training for that person and the entire staff, she said.
Parents should hear by 5 p.m. Wednesday, Jan. 12, from StarMed if their teen received an incorrect dose of the booster, Prelipp said.
The N.C. Department of Health and Human Services also is investigating and will work with the vendor to determine how the error occurred and how to prevent it from happening again, NCDHHS spokesperson Bailey Pennington said in an email Monday evening. The state’s vaccination database will be updated, she said.
MedStar will provide those teens with free antibody tests so that they and their parents can be comfortable knowing they are protected, said Arin Piramzadian, StarMed’s Chief Medical Officer, in an interview with The News & Observer.
“We want to be transparent about it,” Piramzadian said. “We want to make sure that parents know that what we do is perfectly fine. We want parents to get their kids vaccinated, and I don’t want there to be stories like this that unfortunately scare people into not getting vaccinated.”
An estimated 37 teens may have been affected, according to StarMed’s initial estimate, Piramzadian said. That’s based on the number of pediatric doses per vial of the vaccine, Piramzadian said.
“Unfortunately, it was human error,” Piramzadian said. “If the protocols were followed, it would not have happened, but it’s something that we’re sorry about.”
He noted that StarMed administered over 500,000 doses in the last year in 29 different counties. In this case, the employee did not follow the appropriate guidelines, he said, while declining to say what will happen to the employee who made the mistake.
StarMed employees will receive more training to ensure that it doesn’t happen again, he said.
Parent concerns highlight problem
On Jan. 5, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Federal Drug Administration authorized the Pfizer-BioNTech booster shot for teenagers, ages 12 to 15. Teenagers who received their second shot at least five months ago now can get a third booster — the Pfizer vaccine for adults, which is 30 micrograms.
A smaller pediatric dosage of 10 micrograms of the booster shot is available for immunocompromised children ages 5 to 11.
Chapel Hill parent Jocelyn Neal said she was thrilled to hear that her 14-year-old son and 12-year-old daughter were eligible for a booster. She made an appointment for them at a Jan. 6 vaccination clinic at Cedar Ridge.
They arrived to find hundreds of people in line, Neal said, and when it was her 14-year-old’s turn, she watched as the man administering the shot wrote “peds” on his vaccination card, indicating her son had received a pediatric dosage.
The man gave the same dosage to her daughter, Neal said, and wrote the wrong date on both cards. They were not asked to wait 15 minutes to see if the teens had any reactions.
Later that evening, Neal said she returned to the clinic to talk with the manager and show her children’s vaccination cards. The manager corrected the incorrect date on one vaccination card, but not the other. She also agreed with the staff member who had administered the pediatric dosage, even though that didn’t comply with federal guidelines, Neal said.
“I’m frustrated and upset as a parent that I brought this to the attention that night of two people, and they both just insisted” it was correct, Neal said.
On Monday afternoon, she got a call from a representative from StarMed, the vendor at the Jan. 6 clinic, she said. The representative told Neal that other children had received the wrong dose, Neal said.
COVID-19 vaccinations, boosters
StarMed is one of 13 vendors working with the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services to vaccinate people against COVID-19, said Pennington with NCDHHS.
The company has 58 vaccine clinics in operation now, she said, noting that no other issues have been reported at StarMed clinics. The state provides vendors with training and also conducts site visits and checks to identify issues that should be corrected, she said.
While the pediatric dosage is less than recommended, the CDC recommends against re-vaccinating teens who receive a pediatric dose instead of the regular amount, Pennington said.
The decision to add teenagers to the list of people who should get a booster shot came in the midst of a spike in COVID-19 cases, due mostly to the fast-spreading omicron variant.
While the new variant appears to infect people regardless of vaccination status, the symptoms have been more mild in vaccinated patients, health officials said. A majority of those who have been hospitalized with more serious symptoms are unvaccinated, they said.
The Pfizer vaccine has been available for children ages 12-15 since May and for children ages 5-11 since November. The CDC has not yet authorized a vaccine for children under age 5.
Adults can get a booster shot of either the Moderna or Pfizer vaccine, and could need a fourth shot later this year, health officials have said. The CDC soon could authorize a fourth dose of either vaccine for people with weakened immune systems and who got their third shot at least six months earlier.
Spike in cases
A record number of COVID-19 infections have pushed Triangle hospitals to capacity, with Duke, UNC and WakeMed asking patients last week to seek care at their doctor’s office, an urgent care center, a testing clinic or a pharmacy unless it’s an emergency.
CDC records show nearly 453 people were admitted to hospitals statewide last week. The state Department of Health and Human Services reported 3,850 people hospitalized as of Monday afternoon.
The CDC reported Monday that there have been 1,707 cases in Orange County over the last seven days, for a case rate of 1,149 per 100,000 residents.
Federal data shows just over 78% of the population, age 5 and older, is fully vaccinated, and fewer than 10 people have died in the last seven days.
That’s compared with 1,783 cases per 100,000 residents in Durham County over the previous seven days, and 2,328 cases per 100,000 residents in Wake County, the CDC dashboard showed. In Chatham County, 966 cases per 100,000 residents have been reported.
The CDC has shortened its COVID-19 isolation and quarantine timeline for adults and children infected with the virus to five days if they don’t have any symptoms or symptoms are mild.
A negative COVID test is not required to emerge from isolation, however, a person should be fever-free for at least 24 hours and other symptoms must have eased, the CDC said.
NC DHHS and the State Board of Education followed that move by reducing quarantine times for students exposed to the virus or who test positive.
The rules also were changed to allow students and staff who are unvaccinated or not fully vaccinated to stay in school if they are symptom-free and required to wear a face covering. Fully vaccinated students and staff who are symptom-free do not have to quarantine for an exposure.
This story was originally published January 10, 2022 at 5:37 PM.
