Maui Memorial could get vaccine by next week
Hawaii prepares to distribute 81,000 doses in December
Maui Memorial Medical Center could receive its first shipment of COVID-19 vaccines as early as next week as Hawaii prepares to distribute more than 81,000 doses to high-risk health care workers and long-term care facilities in December.
The Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, which a U.S. Food and Drug Administration panel recommended for emergency use on Thursday, is expected to be approved by the FDA in the coming days and shipped out to states as cases climb nationwide.
“Today marks a hopeful moment in our fight against this pandemic,” Gov. David Ige said during a news conference on Thursday. “A vaccine is a vital step in keeping our situation from becoming worse, and it is the beginning of our path to recovery.”
The mRNA vaccine manufactured by Pfizer and BioNTech would be a two-dose injection administered 21 days apart, state officials explained. The companies reported efficacy rates of 95 percent against confirmed COVID-19 and more than 94 percent in adults over 65 years old, with consistency across age, gender, race and ethnicity.
Participants in the study, which included about 44,000 people, were followed for a median of two months after the second dose. The most common side effects were injection site reactions, fatigue, headache, muscle and joint pain, chills and fever.
State Department of Health Director Dr. Libby Char said that once the Pfizer vaccine gets emergency use authorization, Hawaii will put in an order of 45,825 doses. The state expects to get another 36,000
doses of Moderna’s vaccine, which is up for FDA review next Friday, for a total of 81,825 doses in December. Health care workers, longterm care staff and residents, first responders and essential workers would take priority.
Officials said the vaccine will not be mandatory. Hilton Raethel, president and CEO of the Healthcare Association of Hawaii, explained that because the vaccine would only be greenlighted for emergency use, health care organizations will not require employees to get the shot. He said hospitals can require flu shots for their employees because those have full FDA approval.
Getting full approval for the COVID vaccine could take three to seven months, at which point employers could decide whether to require it for their workers.
Employee Health Manager and registered nurse Chrissy Miller said Thursday that Maui Memorial is expecting to get about 975 doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, though the hospital doesn’t have an exact number yet. That shipment would be for the first dose; another shipment about three weeks later would provide supplies for the second dose.
The doses would be available to workers at Maui Memorial, Kula Hospital and Lana‘i Community Hospital, as well as other Maui Healthaffiliated workers, such as physicians from other clinics who offer services at Maui Memorial. Because Walgreens is helping long-term care facilities like Kula Hospital administer the vaccine and may be getting the Moderna version, employees — and community members, once it’s publicly available — need to make sure they get both doses from the same manufacturer, Miller emphasized.
Miller, the team coordinator for the COVID-19 vaccine plan, said the shipment could arrive as early as Sunday and is expected to be delivered directly to the hospital, though they’re also prepared to go and pick it up once it arrives on Maui. The shipment will come with a tracker and will be taken straight into the hospital’s ultra-low temperature freezer for storage.
“It’s a pretty big freezer, so we do have the capacity to store more if we needed to,” Miller said.
Once officials are ready to administer the vaccine, the doses will be pulled out and moved to the hospital’s refrigerator. Each vial can provide five doses. Miller said the plan is to set up appointments at the Employee Health Clinic and bring in workers over the course of a few weeks.
“I really want to focus on maybe giving about, at minimum, 40 doses a day, and then staggering it across each department and offering it Monday through Friday,” she said.
Miller added that each appointment would take about 10 to 15 minutes, as they’ll want to observe health care providers for 10 minutes after they take the vaccine. The hospital may even recommend that workers take the next day off if they’re extra sensitive and experience some soreness or fatigue after getting the vaccine.
Miller said that Maui Health is not planning to require the vaccine. As for whether the hospital might make it mandatory in the future and exclude workers who decline to get it, Miller pointed out that “our employees are represented by the union, and we would have to discuss those options if we were to go down that road.”
“But we’re not looking at mandating it at this stage,” she said.
Miller planned to get vaccinated herself and said that while some people may harbor concerns, the steps of creating a vaccine are years in the making.
“Of course this is a new vaccine, but the methodologies of creating a vaccine, that’s not new,” she said. “There’s been . . . a little over a decade on mRNA vaccines, so this is not a new process, and they’ve gone through various safety and efficacy phases before they would actually release this vaccine.”
Lt. Gov. Josh Green said that the federal government is covering the cost of the vaccine and that while some private practices could apply administration fees, insurance companies have agreed to cover those costs. Green, who’s also a doctor, said that while he understood people’s fears about the vaccine, he planned to get it.
“I can tell you that I wouldn’t put my family through something if I didn’t have faith in it,” Green said. “And I look at this as an opportunity for us to take that next step away from the COVID crisis.” ■ Colleen Uechi can be reached at cuechi@mauinews.com.