TN expects 56K vaccine doses before month’s end
Tennessee officials expect to receive about 56,000 doses of Pfizer’s coronavirus vaccine this month, but this will immunize only a sliver of the residents considered top priority for protection from the virus, according to the state’s revised vaccination plan.
The state government estimates there are 450,000 people in the highest priority category for vaccination. This group includes inpatient health care workers, first responders with direct exposure to the public as well as residents and employees of long-term care facilities.
Once this priority group is immunized, the state will vaccinate another 100,000 health care workers with lower levels of exposure, then begin the momentous task of vaccinating about 1.2 million Tennesseans with two or more medical conditions, like diabetes or hypertension, that make them more vulnerable to the virus.
The revised vaccine distribution plan, released Wednesday, aligns the state with new federal recommendations prioritizing distribution to health care workers and long-term care facilities. The revised plan contains the first concrete details about the initial shipment of vaccine to Tennessee while simultaneously highlighting the long road ahead. Vaccinations will stretch deep into the second half of next year, if not beyond.
“Help is on the way. While we still have a ways to go, we all have a role to play,” said Vice President Mike Pence during a Thursday visit to Memphis, where Fedex will be
central vaccine distribution. “We all need to continue to practice all those things that protect our health and the health of our families.”
In Nashville, where the outbreak is steadily worsening, public health officials mirrored some of the vice president’s optimism despite a lack of vaccine specifics for the city. Dr. Alex Jahangir, chairman of the city’s coronavirus task force, said the forthcoming vaccines “gives us hope the beginning of the end is near.”
Dr. Gill Wright, associate medical director for the Nashville Metro Public Health Department, said city officials still didn’t know how much vaccine it would receive or when it would get it.
“We are prepared to get a very small amount to a very large amount and start getting it in people’s arms as soon as we have it,” Wright said.
The Pfizer vaccine will come first. The state government expects to get 58 trays of Pfizer’s two-dose vaccine – each tray contains 975 doses – in mid-december, according to the revised vaccine plan. Fifty-seven trays will be shipped to hospitals to provide the first dose of the vaccine, and one tray will be reserved by the state “in case of spoilage.”
More Pfizer trays are expected in a “second distribution” that will provide a second dose to the same people as the first.
The vaccine plan does not say when this second distribution is expected, but the two doses are supposed to be given 21 days apart.
Tennessee also expects to receive a smaller shipment of 5,000 doses of the Moderna vaccine, which also requires two doses, “shortly after” the first shipment of Pfizer’s vaccine, according to a news release from the governor’s office. Moderna vaccine will be provided to county health departments to vaccinate priority populations.
Neither the Pfizer nor Moderna vaccines are currently approved for distribution by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration at this time.
Approval may come later this month when an independent FDA committee will meet to review evidence from the Pfizer and Moderna clinical trials on Dec. 10 and Dec. 17, respectively.
One member of that committee is Dr. James Hildreth, an infectious disease expert who leads Meharry Medical College in Nashville.
Hildreth said Thursday that, despite the rapid creation of the prospective vaccines, none of the usual steps taken to verify a vaccine is safe were skipped during development.
“You need to understand how remarkable this is,” Hildreth said. “It will go down probably as a triumph of big science to develop vaccines in a span of 10 or 11 months.”
Nursing home residents jump to front of the line
Tennessee released its first vaccine distribution plan in October, before it was clear what vaccines the state would be getting and when they would be received.
The initial plan established a fourphase hierarchy for distributing the vaccine, prioritizing health care workers and first responders, then older adults and those with serious comorbidities, then teachers and workers in critical industries, and finally kids and young adults.
The revised plan largely keeps this structure intact but more heavily prioritizes residents and employees of nursing homes and long-term care facilities.
This population has now moved to the front of the line, jumping ahead of first responders, low-exposure health care workers and people with two or more high-risk comorbidities.
The revised plan also establishes a priority hierarchy based on age or health conditions within each individual distribution phase.
For example, an emergency room doctor will be prioritized over just about anyone else, but if that doctor is above the age of 65, he or she will be prioritized over even other doctors.
Brett Kelman can be reached at 615-259-8287 or at brett.kelman@ tennessean.com. Follow him on Twitter at @brettkelman.