Shaky Vaccine Rollout Prompts National Guard Deployment in N.C.
Staff members at the Cabarrus County Arena and Event Center administered the COVID-19 vaccine to Phase 1A and 1B Group 1 on January 6th. Source
On January 5th, after a shaky start to COVID-19 vaccine distribution in North Carolina, Governor Roy Cooper mobilized the National Guard to assist in vaccination administration and logistics management.
Brigadier General Jeff Copeland described the details of the mobilization during a Facebook Live conference following Governor Cooper’s announcement. National Guard teams will consist of six members each: two combat medics and four administrative support personnel. They will focus on high density population areas as well as rural communities without large healthcare networks. In addition to bolstering capacity for physically administering more vaccine doses, they will also help to manage logistical aspects of the rollout.
For N.C., the help of the National Guard teams could be critical in speeding up the process to get North Carolinians their COVID-19 shots. North Carolina, like many states, is experiencing difficulties meeting vaccination goals, and currently ranks as the state with the sixth lowest vaccination rate in the country. The N.C. vaccine rollout is being conducted on a county-by-county basis by individual hospitals and health departments under a variety of structures. Issues with the vaccine rollout vary, but Mandy Cohen, secretary of the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) pointed specifically to a shortage of staffers and technical difficulties with data entry and information technology. According to DHHS, there is no statewide reason for shots to be delayed.
Both UNC Health and Duke Health, two of the largest healthcare providers in N.C., have cited delays in paperwork processes and email glitches as the biggest reasons their healthcare workers are delayed in receiving the vaccine. County health departments, meanwhile, face overloaded phone lines and websites as residents struggle to book vaccination appointments.
The delays being experienced across N.C. could cause further consequences later in the vaccine rollout, as new directives from the federal government indicate that future vaccine delivery will partially depend on how quickly the already distributed vaccines are administered. In other words, the slower the vaccine rollout is now, the less N.C. will get in future vaccine appropriations.
The motivation for this policy is clear: the federal government is trying to prevent future waste of the vaccines, as reports of expired and discarded vaccine doses have popped up around the country. Unfortunately, it also means that if N.C. continues to lag behind in vaccine distribution, the critical vaccination process may have to take place over a longer timeframe than originally hoped.
When asked to comment on the status of vaccine distribution in N.C., some state legislators voiced concerns over the rollouts implementation so far. “There are a number of questions about vaccine distribution planning and execution, and we hope that some oversight will result in improvements and advance everyone’s shared goal of vaccinating all who want it as soon as possible,” Republican State Senator Joyce Krawiec shared in a statement.
While only 50 National Guardsmen have been deployed across N.C. so far to help in the COVID-19 vaccination effort, Guard officials say at least 250 will be active within the next two weeks. At such a crucial point in the spread of the virus across the state, the deployment of the National Guard will hopefully facilitate vaccine rollout and eventually slow the virus’ contagion.