My county is now setting up a location and having volunteers to come in and coordinate this effort to facilitate the vaccine. I know in NJ there is something similar set up with volunteers as well in certain cities who are administering the shots and people coming in.
One issue that has impacted at least some portion of the distribution plansâŠpotential for anaphylaxis with the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines.
This means everyone who receives the injection has to be monitored by an HCW for 15 mins or so post injection. Many states were planning to do drive thru vaccines in large parking lots, administering injections in community centers and the likeâŠbut now those plans are generally off the table because everyone has to be monitored, and if someone does have a severe allergic reaction they need access to care.
Some places are doing drive through vaccine administration. You still have to wait for 20 minutes, but you never get out of your car. I know two people in TN who did this.
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Yes, except the main concern there are for people who have a history of allergies. If I recall correctly, anyone with a history of allergies is supposed to get it at a Drâs office/setting where they can be monitored and not at the pharmacy type setting when they start giving them that way. Ultimately they will give them like that. I just received an email from our grocery store pharmacy to be added to the list for when they start giving them, CVS already has a list, Iâm already on the waiting list for the vaccine in my county as is my entire family for when appointments become available. I work in a school so Iâm first in my family along with my parents. I will be so happy when I can finally see them regularly.
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One of the problems with some nursing home patients is the consent form. Some of these patients are under guardianship or are no longer capable of understanding the informed consent form. So someone else with legal authority has to sign for them. Those people have to be found. It takes time.
Here in California, I havenât heard anything from pharmacies, doctors or the news about when or how the vaccine will be given to those not in nursing homes or medical personnel. Crickets.
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According to our state health department, just under 20% of the vaccines have been administered.
Phase 1a is frontline healthcare workers, first responders, and residents/staff of assisted living facilities. This appears to follow CDC guidelines.
I understand thereâre issues with people refusing to take the shots or needing consent, but there seems to be a general lack of organization at many levels to vaccinate the population as quickly as possible. Israel started vaccination a week later than we did and it has already vaccinated 10% of its population. Yes, itâs a small country so it isnât constrained by supply. But we donât have a problem in the supply either. Our problem currently is in administering the shots.
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You hit the nail on the head. My MIL lives in an independent living facility. They send out regular emails and have kept families abreast of covid from day 1 and procedures and what is going on, etc.
Now the vaccine. Their mistake IMO was telling us/them that they will be getting it the second week of January when the vaccine wasnât even approved yet. So stupid. I can see these people asking non stop âwhen are we getting it?â etc. Anyway, they did send a draft of the consent form ages ago and that each person will need to provide their medicare cards, etc. and that they will help them with everything they need to do etc. I told my husband to make sure he goes over it with his mom, but they arenât allowing visitors and talking to her on the phone to go over it is not going to work but it shouldnât be a problem for her to sign it, and I think where she is nearly everyone will, but I can definitely see other places having it be a problem. If those people dontâ want it, theyâre just putting themselves at even greater risk.
Several media outlets reported it. He may have said the same thing about the residents, but he said this specifically about the staff:
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Ugh! My best friend is a hospice nurse, in So Cal (Los Angeles County) who was scheduled (through her employer) for her first Covid vaccine today. She was required to fill out massive amounts of (very personal) paperwork, and was actually beginning to feel anxious because of all of it. Yesterday she received notice that the (Pfizer) vaccine had not arrived and now she and her staff are on hold, with a new date scheduled for late January.
Part of the distribution/administration has to do with the vaccine itself. Only certain pharmacies have received the subzero freezers to store it (Pfizer vaccine). Then you need to thaw it (3 hours), let it come to room temperature (30min), dilute it within 2 hours of coming to room temperature, and then administer it within 6 hours. Then you get 5-6 doses per vial (at first it was âthrow away excessâ but now itâs "use whatever you can get out of the vial but donât combine vials). So itâs a timing thing. The doses can be sent to a LTC but even the transportation cuts into the time you can administer the doses before having to discard it. Itâs sort of a raceâand then add the paperwork involved.
Some places have a good systemâappointments scheduled (so they can estimate needed doses), an intake person covering paperwork, people to reconstitute and draw up the doses and a third team to administer. Assembly line.
If there are leftover doses at the end of the day they administer them to whomever they can (preferably someone top tier but it doesnât always happen) to avoid wasting any.
If doses are prepared for a LTC and they donât take them for some reason (itâs happened) itâs a scramble to give them . Youâve got only a few hours to administer so itâs not like you can ship them elsewhere.
In FL the first tier are health workers with direct patient contact, nursing homes and people over 65. Then it will be +55 etc,
Drive through vaccination clinics are set up on-line with all forms printable on the internetâbring them with you. We are lucky to have a population of retirees (esp in our county) who have volunteered to work the process. So we have extra manpower. I hear itâs working well.
One problem is the shortage of pharmacists working at the two main pharmaciesâmany quit from overwork or have been let go to cut costs and are now being begged to come backâand theyâre saying no. Some are expected to administer vaccine on top of the usual workload and itâs too muchâit takes much more manpower. Add to that (looking at you CA) that pharmacists arenât considered front line health care workers although they are the ones giving the vaccines and seeing every sick person who walks in with a script.
(In FL pharmacists are considered front line)
Not every state (or Canada I hear) is using all the available doses. They have huge fines for a pharmacist giving a dose to someone not in the right tier so anecdotal sources say that effectively thousands of doses have been discarded.
What kind of paperwork? What was so personal?
The main things on the covid vac forms are asking if you are allergic to any components of the vaccine, are you immune compromised (chemo or are you presently ill) and if youâve had another vaccine recently. Donât know what else there could be.
Maine is doing well.
"Maine is one of the fastest states in the country to immunize its population based on the doses that have arrived. At the federal level Operation Warp Speed is shipping doses to states at rates much lower than promised by the Trump administration.
According to a Bloomberg News vaccine tracker updated on Thursday, Maine had given the first dose of the vaccine to 2.02 percent of its population, behind only West Virginia at 2.5 percent and South Dakota at 2.14 percent. And based on the metric of how quickly a state is using the doses that have been shipped by the federal government, Maine was tops in the nation, with 51.1 percent of doses in the arms of patients. The next-highest was South Dakota at 49.6 percent.
Maineâs vaccination rate is double the national average of 25 percent of doses that have been administered."
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I was not asked if I had another vaccine recently. I had to check off allergies, and list any medications I took. I wasnât even asked to list why I took the medications and the reasons were not on the list of things to check off. I checked I was allergic to a medicationâŠbut they didnât even ask which one. I was asked if I was allergic to foods, but didnât ask which one.
I didnât feel there was anything overly personalâŠat all.
Not even sure why you needed to list medications.
I really donât know, she didnât go into detail. The forms may have been additional supplied by her employer - a major home hospice organization.
Iâm in Ohio. I work in a hospital setting but not direct care. No clue when I will be offered a vaccine even though I am in hospital and multi-clinic spaces often. It may be months.
Please, please, PLEASE do not assume that because things are going fine in your city, county or area that it is happening elsewhere. Vaccinating a hospital staff might mean vaccinating 300 people - or 3000 or many, many more.
Do not assume that because you talked to a few friends or saw on Facebook that things are going fine that they are. Hope for the best of course, but take it all with a grain of salt.
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Wouldnât it make more sense to offer appointments first to the highest priority group and have them do the paperwork in advance, so that they can know exactly how much vaccine to remove from the super-freezer at what time, rather than removing some vaccine from the super-freezer without knowing exactly how many doses will be needed?
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Ive seen the consent forms for the facility my MiL lives in and our county. Nothing any more personal than when you get a vaccine at a pharmacy or go to a Dr office. Sorry others are having issues that cause them anxiety as that should not be something they should have to deal with in getting this vaccine!
Just now, on NBC, they showed a LONG line of cars at Butterfly World, a local FL place. I would imagine it will take a full day just to get thru the line of cars already there. Also, will they run out of the vaccine?