Earlier this year elderly people waited in long lines, sometimes in the cold and rain, for their chance to get a COVID vaccine. Others signed up to get any leftover doses that remained at the end of the day.
Now the situation has reversed. It's the vaccines that are waiting for recipients. Last month the Chatham County Health Department destroyed 321 doses of Pfizer vaccine that expired June 30.
It could happen again this month. As of Thursday the Chatham County Health Department had 440 doses of Pfizer, 20 doses of Moderna, and 15 doses of Johnson and Johnson & Johnson that will expire on July 31. That's a total of 475 doses and about a week to use them.
Some will go unused unless vaccinations speed up. Last week the health department and CORE, the Community Organized Relief Effort that has been sponsoring pop-ups clinics around the county, distributed 415 vaccine doses.
"Vaccine supply is no longer an issue. There is plenty of vaccine available through public health and various other agencies and organizations," said Chatham County Nurse Manager Tammi Brown. "We will continue to offer vaccine at the health department and partner with CORE on vaccination outreach events to try to make it as convenient as possible for people to get vaccinated."
And those end of the day doses that produced waiting lists in the winter? They go unused too, at a rate of about about three to five doses a day, Brown said.
Vaccination rates
The vaccination rate in Chatham County on Thursday reached 42% full vaccination and 46% with at least one dose.
Bryan County reached 39% fully vaccinated and 42% with at least one dose.
Effingham County reached 30% fully vaccinated and 32% with at least one dose.
Georgia reached 40% fully vaccinated and 45% with at least one dose.
Staff vaccination rates at the area's hospitals are highest among those closest to patients, said Dr. Stephen Thacker of Memorial Health.
For physicians, about 95% at Memorial are vaccinated. Overall about 60% of the hospital-based employees are vaccinated, Thacker said.
At St. Joseph's/Candler there's been a concerted effort to address individual employees' concerns about the vaccine one-on-one. Among hospital workers, the concerns centered on fertility, pregnancy and breastfeeding issues. Once those and other identified issues were addressed directly with factual information, about 70% of staffers accepted the vaccine, the health system reported in April.
Nationwide about 75% of hospital workers who have direct contact with patients had received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine by the end of May, according to a WebMD and Medscape Medical News analysis of data collected by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) from 2,500 hospitals across the U.S.
Other health settings see similar or lower rates. At the Georgia Coastal Health District about 50% of public health workers are vaccinated.
The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission released guidance in late May stating that hospitals and other employers can require vaccination in some cases.
"Federal EEO laws do not prevent an employer from requiring all employees physically entering the workplace to be vaccinated for COVID-19, so long as employers comply with the reasonable accommodation provisions of the ADA and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and other EEO considerations," it posted on its web site.
Nursing homes, despite being hit hard by COVID cases and deaths among residents and workers, lag behind other health care settings for vaccine rates among employees. In Georgia, about 48% of nursing home staff are vaccinated, the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services reported on its website.
The site lists COVID data on cases, deaths and vaccination status by facility on an interactive map. It reveals that staff vaccination rates vary greatly from facility to facility. For example, on Tybee Oceanside Rehabilitation and Health lists a 66% vaccination rate while the facility just across Van Horne Avenue, Savannah Beach Health & Rehabilitation Center lists a 35% staff vaccination rate.
Explore the map at https://data.cms.gov/covid-19/covid-19-nursing-home-data.
Mary Landers is the environment and health reporter at the Savannah Morning News. Contact her at 912-655-8295. Twitter: @MaryLandersSMN
This article originally appeared on Savannah Morning News: Hundreds of COVID vaccines expired, destroyed in Chatham County because of lack of use
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