Upon arrival, doses intended for clinic will be given at health dept.
-
World War II veteran Ash Rothlein receives his second Moderna vaccination at the Clay County Health Department on Thursday. Rothlein, 96, is a recipient of the French Legion of Honor. He has dedicated much of his life to honoring those who died on the beaches of Normandy
A local vaccination clinic canceled due to supply chain disruption won't be rescheduled, but those extra shots will be administered in a different format. The day-long clinic had been scheduled for last Saturday, Feb. 20, at Tri County Community College, as a way to boost Clay County's limited allocation of 100 vaccines per week. Instead, a winter storm wreaked havoc across parts of the United States, causing a variety of problems that prevented vaccines from being delivered.
Clay County Health Director, Clarissa Rogers, said the extra 150 vaccines allocated by the state specifically for the clinic will simply be rolled into the rest of the agency's supplies whenever they are received. "We'll just use those to distribute here to our residents on the waiting list," Rogers said. "We were going to pull from the waiting list Saturday anyway, so I think we'll just do them during the week at the clinic. When that will come, I don't know, it will just be when the state sends it out."
While the storm had little impact on western North Carolina apart from frigid temperatures, delivery services such as UPS and FedEx were often unable to package vaccines or make deliveries between hubs. With icy conditions causing traffic delays, accidents and road closures, doses were held back rather than risk expiration. "I think the vaccine distributors were a little bit scared to put this stuff on trucks when you don't know if it's going to make it," Rogers said. "Coldchain storage is just so specific, it wasn't a risk worth taking for them." The clinic, a joint-effort among Clay, Cherokee and Graham counties, had been in the planning stages for weeks.
Rogers said there is a possibility she might try to organize a similar one at a future time, but for now, she's most focused on trying to increase the weekly allocation that Clay County receives from the state. There may be reasons for optimism. Executives from Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson told Congress on Tuesday that U.S. supplies should balloon in coming weeks due manufacturing expansions and new vaccine authorizations. During a hearing at the U.S.House of Representatives, drug makers said they would be able to provide enough vaccines to fully inoculate 130 million people in the United States before April and they reaffirmed a commitment to distribute enough doses necessary to vaccinate all Americans by the end of July.
"If we could even get an extra hundred a week, that would be nice," Rogers said. "There was a state contact who emailed me yesterday and I told him that we are capable of administering more than what we are being given. So, hopefully they are taking those questionnaires into consideration and maybe they'll increase our weekly allocation." The United States reached a once-unthinkable milestone on Monday, surpassing 500,000 known COVID19-related deaths in a pandemic that has now been raging for almost a full year. Clay County Health Department reported 49 active cases within the county as of Tuesday.
Across the state, the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services reported 1,514 new cases Tuesday — the fewest since Nov. 2, 2020. Residents can call 389- 8052 to get on Clay County Health Department's vaccine waiting list.