Alamance County will receive its first doses of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine this week, with just under 1,000 doses expected to be delivered to Alamance Regional Medical Center in the first round of disbursement.
North Carolina expects to see more than 85,000 doses arriving across the state this week. The first doses arrived Monday at Duke Health in Durham, Atrium Health in Charlotte and Wake Forest Baptist Health in Winston-Salem, with doses going to 53 hospitals statewide in week one.
Alamance Regional Medical Center in Burlington is among the first hospitals expecting shipments, with 975 doses slated to arrive this week.
Douglas Allred with Cone Health said the hospital system is expecting its doses to arrive Thursday with vaccinations beginning on Friday. Vaccinations will likely start at Cone Health’s COVID-19 only facility. A date for vaccinations to begin at ARMC has not yet been announced.
Neither the hospital nor the Alamance County Health Department could provide figures on how many more vaccines the county could expect to see or when additional shipments may come in. Last week, state health officials said it will likely be spring before significant amounts of the vaccine are available for North Carolinians and on Tuesday, Gov. Roy Cooper said state officials expect to learn about new shipments the Friday before they are sent out from the federal government.
Tony Lo Giudice, the new health director for the county, said available doses could change in the coming weeks or months.
“A lot of it is dependent on Moderna’s emergency use authorization should they as well be authorized. It will put more doses in the market and more coming to North Carolina,” he explained.
As of now, all of North Carolina’s COVID-19 vaccines are produced by Pfizer and BioNTech. The vaccines are shipped in concentrated form in glass vials with five doses per vial in a tray that holds 975 vials. Alamance Regional Medical Center is slated to receive one tray in week one.
The vaccine must be kept at minus 94 degrees Fahrenheit until it's ready to use, so hospitals receiving doses this week must have freezers capable of these temperatures or must be able to receive and handle shipments packed in dry ice.
“Right now, this first week, hospitals are primarily where those doses are going to. As more of those vaccines hit the market … public health departments will be able to continue vaccinations in the first tier … as well as the long-term care facilities,” Lo Giudice said. “For those long-term care facilities, most, if not all, have registered under a program to work in conjunction with pharmacies so the long-term care facilities should be getting their vaccinations from the pharmacy entities that they registered with.”
The Pfizer vaccine includes two doses administered 21 days apart. Lo Giudice said the Health Department has a vaccination management system established that will record the information of those who are vaccinated and allow healthcare providers to keep in touch with patients and scheduled their second doses.
The North Carolina Department of Health and Human Service has outlined which segments of the population will be first to get vaccinated through a four-phase system. The first vaccinations will be given in Phase 1A which includes medical staff working with COVID-19 patients.
“The hospitals will be taking care of their folks, the Health Department will of course be looking at our folks that are involved in the COVID response especially the nurses that are going into the long-term care facilities” Lo Guidice said.
“Phase 1A is primarily your high risk health care workers as well as long-term care staff and residents,” he said. “The Health Department will also serve as a catch bin kind of for home healthcare workers that are doing COVID-19 work and funeral homes that are doing COVID-19 work where there is a high risk of exposure. We’ll kind of fill in some of the gaps there.”
The remainder of Phase 1 will include adults with two or more chronic, high-risk conditions, according to Lo Giudice. Also included are paramedics, EMTs, firefighters and law enforcement officers that respond to medical calls.
Phase 2 includes frontline workers without chronic health conditions and those living in congregate living settings. These include K-12 education workers, other healthcare workers, migrant farm and fishery workers, incarcerated individuals or individuals living in homeless shelters. These groups do not need to have chronic conditions to be vaccinated under Phase 2, Lo Giudice said.
Phase 2 also includes some adults ages 18 to 64 with one chronic condition and adults over the age of 65.
Phase 3 starts to open up to essential workers, which Lo Giudice called “a broad catch-bin area.” Those at-risk of exposure, K-12 students and college students are included in this phase.
Phase 4 includes the remainder of the population. At this point, the Pfizer vaccine is approved for individuals ages 16 and older, Lo Giudice said.
The NC DHHS has set up a website that briefly outlines the vaccination phases and more information. To learn more, visit https://covid19.ncdhhs.gov/vaccines.
An Elon Poll published last week showed than more than half of North Carolina residents don’t plan to get the vaccine or are still unsure of it. Lo Giudice said the vaccine is safe, effective and strongly recommends that those who are eligible get vaccinated.
“This vaccine went under clinical trials with more than 43,000 people and it touts a 95 percent efficacy rate. It’s very effective in stopping the spread. If you have any concerns about allergies, work with your healthcare provider moving forward,” he said. “You cannot get COVID-19 from getting the vaccination.”
“My biggest recommendation is when it’s your turn, get your vaccine. The more people we can get vaccinated, the faster we can hopefully start to return back to what was once our normal,” he added.
This article originally appeared on Times-News: COVID-19 vaccines are coming to Alamance County. Now what?
