Some facing revaccination

Chardon nursing home residents may need to get another shot due to vaccine storage issue, DeWine says

Residents of a Chardon nursing home who received the novel coronavirus vaccine Feb. 1 may need to be revaccinated after it was learned some of the doses given by Walgreens may not have been stored under proper cold storage conditions.

Heather Hill Homes, located at 12340 Bass Lake Road, is one of five facilities in Northeast Ohio that were given those vaccines. Two others were located in Ashtabula County and the other two in Cuyahoga County.

Gov. Mike DeWine said during a Feb. 2 news conference the vaccines’ temperature “was not kept where it should have been.”

Dr. Bruce Vanderhoff, the chief medical officer at the Ohio Department of Health, said the coronavirus vaccines can be difficult to handle because they require “ultra cold storage until they’re ready to be administered.”

“If there is any breach in that cold storage process before the vaccine is thawed and then administered to patients, (the) vaccine can’t be relied upon to be effective, to work as it was designed,” Vanderhoff said.

He said Walgreens “may have administered some vaccines in those five nursing homes that shouldn’t have been used because of uncertainty of proper cold storage leading up to vaccination.”

“We understand that Walgreens identified

this through their quality control processes then promptly communicated with the CDC and the manufacturer regarding what the appropriate next steps should be,” Vanderhoff said. “Based on conversation I had with them literally just prior to this press conference, the guidance that they’ve received leads them now to be working with the CDC and the impacted nursing homes and the nursing homes’ medical directors to determine which patients may need to be revaccinated.”

DeWine said the compromised lot of vaccines was not the only shots administered at these nursing homes.

“Somebody could have been in that nursing home and got it from a different lot and we’re assured by Walgreens that they know who got what lot,” he said.