Vaccine update: SC to get its ‘largest’ supply of first doses next week. What to know.
South Carolina’s supply of coronavirus vaccine continues to grow, so much so that the state is expecting to receive its “largest allocation” of first doses next week, officials said.
Next week, state health officials expect first doses to increase by roughly 8,000, including both Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines combined, to total “just above 100,000” doses, said Nick Davidson, the state Department of Health and Environmental Control’s deputy for public health Nick Davidson said.
As of Thursday, the state had received more than 1 million total vaccine doses, according to DHEC data. Nearly 814,000 of those first and second doses have been administered to about 621,000 people.
York County as of Thursday had given 27,939 first and second doses, ranking the county 10th statewide for the most shots administered per county, according to state data. York County had administered roughly 2.5% of provided doses in the state as of Thursday.
Lancaster County, a few spots below, had given 16,974 first and second doses, ranking the county 14th statewide, according to state data. The county, with about 98,000 people, had administered roughly 1.6% of provided doses in the state as of Thursday.
Chester County, with about 33,000 people, had given 2,630 doses as of Thursday, administering less than 1% of provided doses in the state, according to state data.
Here’s what else to know about vaccine rollout in South Carolina:
SC could move to the next eligibility phase soon — maybe.
At a recent South Carolina state House healthcare subcommittee meeting, state health director Dr. Edward Simmer said South Carolina could move into Phase 1b by mid-to-late March.
However, demand for the vaccine among Phase 1a individuals — health-care workers, long-term care facility residents and staff, and anyone 65 and older — continues to outpace supply, officials said. So, a transition from Phase 1a, which includes about 1.3 million residents, to Phase 1b is unlikely to happen until demand eases, officials said.
“Once we see that appointments are beginning to drop off — meaning that the demand is better matching the supply — then we will give additional consideration to transitioning from Phase 1a to Phase 1b,” said Dr. Linda Bell, state epidemiologist, during the agency’s briefing Wednesday.
Phase 1b consists of about 574,000 “front line essential workers,” including teachers, law enforcement officers, firefighters, corrections personnel, postal workers and grocery store workers.
“We are giving consideration to that transition time frame,” Bell said. “This is continually under discussion and we may actually be providing an update about any anticipated changes in the near future.”
North Carolina, less than 30 miles from Rock Hill, has started administering doses this week to “front line essential workers” — or group 3, which includes teachers and childcare workers. The state, which initially had no residency requirement, recently altered its policy that now prevents out-of-state residents from coming into the state for the sole purpose of securing a coronavirus vaccine.
More and more vaccine supply is entering the state.
This week, South Carolina’s federal vaccine allocation fell “just below 100,000” first doses of Pfizer and Moderna combined, Davidson said. Next week, it will be “just above 100,000” doses, he said.
According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control Prevention’s allocation data, 57,330 first doses of Pfizer and 48,800 first doses of Moderna will make way into South Carolina next week, totaling 106,130 — a stark jump from the state’s allocation of less than 80,000 first doses per week last month.
So far, the state has received a total of 1,084,750 doses, according to DHEC’s dashboard.
South Carolina as of Thursday had administered 389,387 first doses of Pfizer-BioNTech’s coronavirus vaccine and 182,280 first doses of Moderna’s.
The state has given out 163,926 second doses of Pfizer’s vaccine and 78,195 of Moderna’s.
A third vaccine may soon come into play.
The Johnson & Johnson coronavirus vaccine is quickly moving toward emergency approval, and DHEC officials are starting to contemplate how to incorporate the single dose vaccine into its rollout effort.
“We will probably spread it pretty widely,” Davidson said Wednesday. “I doubt that we’re going to focus on any one particular situation because there’s probably a lot of different entities who can use it.”
Clinical trials showed that a single dose — which would give providers more flexibility than Pfizer and Moderna’s two-dose requirement — had an efficacy rate up to 72%, officials said. The U.S. Federal Drug Administration’s vaccine advisory committee is scheduled to meet Friday to review the company’s request for emergency use authorization.
“There could also be some communities that are more difficult to reach — where transportation could be limited — and we might be able to use it in some of those communities,” he said. “So, it really is probably not going to be that we target any one vaccine to any one particular either area or provider. We’ll probably do a fair amount of spread with it.”
Number of new coronavirus cases continue to drop.
South Carolina’s daily count of new coronavirus cases dropped below 1,000 in recent weeks, but Bell said it’s a little soon to chalk up the decline to the vaccine.
If anything, Bell said the lower totals can be attributed to the virus’s rampant activity across the state in past months and the near-week of bad weather that likely kept residents inside.
“For a period of about 90 days it is very unlikely to be reinfected,” she said Wednesday. “And when we have a virus circulating in the community, the virus has a harder time finding susceptible people, when you’ve recently had that many people who are infected.”
Nearly 9% of the 16,333 tests reported Wednesday came back positive, according to DHEC. The agency calculates the positivity rate by taking the total number of positive viral tests and dividing it by the total number of tests taken.
“If we don’t want to see another upward surge, we have to continue to practice all those things that have contributed to the decline in cases,” Bell said. “Right now, when we have limited vaccine supply, that relies so heavily on people continuing to observe the use of masks, physical distancing, avoiding gatherings. Those drive our cases down.”
This story was originally published February 25, 2021 at 3:02 PM.
