Each week, the Cherokee County Health Department receives its shipment of vaccines on Tuesdays. However, winter storms prevented that shipment from arriving on time last week, causing the health department to have to reschedule a week’s worth of vaccination appointments.
“We did so much calling last week,” said Health Director David Badger, adding that he was proud of his staff. “They did an awesome job.”
On Monday morning, the health department finally got its shipment, making this week a busy week for them. Instead of its typical 300 doses, the health department will have 900 doses to administer Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Monday.
The 900 doses includes both last week’s and this week’s first doses, 200 first doses meant for the special event that was to be held Saturday, plus a surprise additional 100 first doses the state allocated to the county.
“It was a pleasant surprise, but it came on a bad week,” Badger said.
He said they’ve had to adjust their schedule and condense to fit all appointments in, with most rescheduled appointments on the same day of the week as the original appointment. With the surprise allocation, they’ve been able to move up some appointments from April.
As the health department was simply told vaccines could be delayed at the beginning of the week, staff was waiting and seeing each day if the shipment would arrive. They rescheduled appointments day by day, then as second doses were available, pulled those with appointments for second doses on what were becoming busier days to fill in spots last week.
“We basically just shifted people,” Badger said.
As of Monday morning, 3,202 residents had received their first dose of the vaccine, an increase of 114 doses from the previous week. Another 1,810 had received their second dose, an increase of 605 doses from the previous week.
On Friday, the White House COVID-19 Response Team addressed the severe weather’s impact on vaccine shipments, noting that all 50 states were impacted. Delays were caused by logistics and transportation teams being snowed in, road closures, and power outages at vaccine sites. The team expected the backlog of doses would be delivered within the week.
The N.C. Department of Health & Human Services said vaccines scheduled to arrive Feb. 16-17 were now scheduled to arrive Feb. 22-24. Allocations for this week were expected arrive during the same time.
Even with the delay of vaccine shipments, the state planned to move forward with entering Group 3 today, starting with educators. Additional frontline essential workers in Group 3 would become eligible for vaccines Wednesday, March 10.
With two special events in the past month focussed on vaccinating local educators, Badger is confident that everyone who wanted to get vaccinated has gotten their first or second dose. Erlanger Western Carolina Hospital, Walgreens and Peachtree Community Health Center were all scheduled to receive shipments of vaccines this week, for a total of 1,400 first doses of vaccines available in the county this week.
“That’s positive,” he said.
To find a vaccine location in North Carolina, the state encourages residents to visit myspot.nc.gov.
He had no idea if the state would continue to allocate an additional 100 doses to the county health department, bringing its weekly allocation to 400 first doses.
“I hope it’s up to 400 every week,” Badger said. “That would be good.”