NC announces counties, providers that will hold large-scale vaccine events
The N.C. Department of Health and Human Services provided details Thursday about the locations of mass COVID-19 vaccination events, an effort to speed up the state’s distribution.
“We get shipments every seven days or so and we want to make sure that the shipments we’re getting in are going to be able to get out into arms within those seven days,” said Dr. Mandy Cohen, Secretary of the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services, at a Thursday news conference.
The state health department anticipates that about 45,000 doses of vaccine will be administered across 23 counties, including five in the Triangle — Chatham, Durham, Johnston, Orange and Wake.
DHHS did not provide specifics about the events and referred people to the providers’ phone numbers and websites. Large-scale vaccine events will take place over the weekend and into next week, Cohen said.
Anyone who is eligible for vaccine in North Carolina will be able to attend one of the events and receive a free shot, regardless of what kind of health insurance they have or their legal status. Some of the providers may require an appointment.
North Carolina has consistently ranked in the bottom third in vaccines administered per 100,000 people, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. At Tuesday’s news conference, Cohen introduced the “high-throughput” sites as a way of pushing out vaccines that may have otherwise lingered in a freezer.
“We’ve all shared a sense of urgency of wanting to get vaccine into arms as quickly as possible, so this was already work that’s been underway and to bring together the logistics, the clinical and the actual space to make sure that these kinds of things happen,” Cohen said.
If a health department or hospital had large amounts of leftover vaccine from previous weeks, they did not receive more this week, Cohen said. Instead, their share was shifted to providers who have been able to move through vaccine more quickly and who indicated they could scale up.
DHHS also has asked each recipient of vaccine in the state for a detailed plan describing how they plan to distribute their allocated vaccine within seven days.
Equity, access in vaccine distribution
In addition to speed, officials are considering equity and access when choosing locations for the larger vaccine clinics.
When North Carolina first received vaccine, it prioritized having at least one place for people to receive a shot in each county. As mass vaccine sites come online, Cohen said, the state is still trying to balance that geographic access while also ensuring there is availability in historically marginalized communities.
“It’s a limited pool of vaccine that comes to us,” Cohen said, “so if we take vaccine and put it into these high throughput (sites), it does mean that there will be less in places that may be less efficient and less speedy at getting out the vaccine.”
Staff from N.C. Emergency Management and the National Guard could help with the vaccine distribution at some of the sites, according to a release from NC DHHS.
N.C. Emergency Management Director Mike Sprayberry said there are 24 National Guard personnel helping Albemarle Regional Health Services and the Forsyth County Health Department with vaccination efforts, and more than 250 will be mobilized by the end of next week.
Cohen said the personnel could vary in other communities, depending on who is hosting the event. That could range from healthcare personnel to health department officials to volunteers, Cohen added.
“We’re going to need to use different approaches in different places in the state to make sure that we can have vaccine access points across our state that allow us to also get to that level of speed that we want,” Cohen said.
Vaccine eligibility expands
UNC Health plans to give about 10,000 doses of vaccine at 15 clinics statewide this week, spokesman Alan Wolf wrote in an email. Rather than distinct mass vaccine events, UNC Health is scaling up its efforts at places like the Friday Center in Chapel Hill.
On Thursday, the Friday Center vaccinated about 600 people, Wolf said, with plans for similar numbers on Friday and Saturday. UNC Health staff expect to increase capacity there to as many as 1,500 doses a day, depending on what it receives from the state.
Thursday, North Carolina updated its vaccine eligibility, expanding the current eligible group to anyone who is at least 65 years old, as well as health care workers with patient contact and anyone living or working in a long-term care facility.
Also Thursday, Honeywell, Atrium Health, Tepper Sports & Entertainment announced large-scale vaccination events in the Charlotte area, The Charlotte Observer reported.
They will be held at Bank of America Stadium and Charlotte Motor Speedway as well as a site in Winston-Salem that hasn’t been named yet. The partners have a goal of giving 1 million vaccinations by July 4, according to a news release.
Cohen said there are similar conversations happening elsewhere in the state, and she expects to see other partnerships.
List of large-scale vaccine events in North Carolina
Counties and providers that will host large-scale vaccine events include:
- Bertie County: Bertie County Health Department (Albemarle Regional Health Services)
- Buncombe County: Buncombe County Health Department in partnership with Western North Carolina Community Health Services, and Western Carolina Medical Society
- Cabarrus County: Atrium Health
- Camden County: Camden County Health Department (Albemarle Regional Health Services)
- Chatham County: UNC Health
- Chowan County: Chowan County Health Department (Albemarle Regional Health Services)
- Currituck County: Currituck County Health Department (Albemarle Regional Health Services)
- Durham County: Duke Health
- Forsyth County: Forsyth County Department of Public Health
- Gates County: Gates County Health Department (Albemarle Regional Health Services)
- Guilford County: Cone Health
- Henderson County: Blue Ridge Community Health Services, Henderson County Department of Public Health, Mountain Area Health Education Center, Pardee Hospital (UNC Health)
- Hertford County: Hertford County Health Department (Albemarle Regional Health Services)
- Johnston County: UNC Health
- Madison County: Hot Springs Health Center, Madison County Health Department, Mountain Area Health Education Center
- Mecklenburg County: Atrium Health
- Orange County: UNC Health
- Pasquotank County: Pasquotank County Health Department (Albemarle Regional Health Services)
- Perquimans County: Perquimans County Health Department (Albemarle Regional Health Services)
- Pitt County: Vidant Health
- Wake County: UNC REX Healthcare, Duke Raleigh Hospital, and WakeMed in partnership with community-based physician practices, Advance Community Health, NeighborHealth and others
Richard Stradling contributed to this story.
This story was originally published January 14, 2021 at 12:20 PM with the headline "NC announces counties, providers that will hold large-scale vaccine events."