Winter weather delays Georgia’s entire COVID vaccine shipment, affects appointments

The winter storm impacting much of the U.S. with large amounts of snow, power outages and more is now delaying shipments of the COVID-19 vaccine to states, including Georgia.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced delays of both the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines earlier this week. Those doses typically arrive during the first half of the week but due to the weather, they were not shipped by the manufacturers at all.

Georgia is allocated around 125,000 doses of the vaccine per week, which are then distributed to around 1,100 providers.

Due to the delays, vaccine appointments for Middle Georgia residents could be canceled if local providers run out of doses before the next shipment comes in, according to North Central Health District spokesperson Michael Hokanson.

“It is not just our area. It’s the entire shipment for the state of Georgia,” he said. “We have not had to make any cancellations or reschedule any appointments because the supply that we have in hand is enough to get us through this week.”

Middle Georgia vaccine appointments

If the vaccine shipment delay continues, county health departments won’t be able to make new vaccination appointments. Currently, the 13 health departments in the NCHD have not opened up their schedules for next week.

“If we do not get anything at all this week, then we probably will not be able to open up appointments,” Hokanson said. “We can’t put shots in arms if we don’t have shots.”

Some of the larger facilities in the NCHD including Bibb and Houston County could see appointment cancellations occur as the week goes on. Hokanson said that county health departments are trying to compensate for the delay by hanging on to the doses of those who do not come to their appointments.

Health officials typically try to schedule someone else for that same day if an appointment is missed, but they hope that some of those doses will help get them through the week.

Getting a new appointment

But if a Middle Georgia resident does have their appointment canceled by one of the local health departments then it doesn’t mean they will have to go through the long, tedious process of getting another appointment.

Residents with appointments that have to be canceled will be informed and if there is a date set for the next shipment then they will be given a date and time for the new appointment.

If no word on the shipment is available then residents will be placed on a list and called once doses become available.

“Everybody that already has an appointment is guaranteed an appointment,” Hokanson said. “If they are already on the books then we will make sure they get their doses.”

Scheduling second doses

Hokanson said that those residents who are waiting on their second dose should not panic as the 28 days between the first dose of the Moderna vaccine and the second is a minimum target date.

The CDC says second doses of Pfizer and Moderna vaccines may be administered up to six weeks after the first dose.

But Hokanson said that even if it goes over that a person would not have to start the vaccination process over. The first dose still provides some level of protection against the virus.

There is no current timeline for when the vaccines could be shipped to Georgia..

This story was originally published February 18, 2021 at 11:24 AM.