COLUMBIA, S.C. — The South Carolina Department of Environmental Control (SCDHEC) Board met Thursday morning to discuss the COVID-19 response and vaccination plan, among other things.
Stephen White is the Immunization Branch Leader at SCDHEC and provided the board members a look at what that COVID-19 vaccine efforts look like at the department.
“There’s a lot of things that we do know, and there’s a lot of things that we don’t know," White said.
According to White, DHEC created an interim plan on Oct. 16 that was submitted and approved by the CDC HHS.
The plan is still under revision as things continue to change, but the CDC has asked them to prioritize certain populations.
“We’re doing that in tandem with a vaccine advisory committee. Dr. Bell, Linda Bell, helps to coordinate that. It’s a very large group of external stakeholders that meet on a weekly basis and they provide good feedback for DHEC to consider for our allocation purposes once the vaccine is made available to the state.”
According to White, in order for a place to be a 'COVID provider' and administer the vaccine, they have to be enrolled per CDC requirements.
“So currently DHEC has set up an enrollment team within DHEC. We are currently processing enrollments as we get those and currently to date we have 139 organizations which have registered, if you will or applied to be a COVID provider.”
White said this vaccine will be one of the trickier ones they have handled.
“We’re used to in the past as far as refrigerated or frozen vaccines… these are ultracold vaccines that are stored at -80 degrees Celsius which is really cold.”
The vaccine is also a two-dose vaccine that requires the same brand for both doses.
Issues like these, along with how to properly store and distribute the vaccine are all logistical issues the team is hoping to solve before they are made available.