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Thousands of COVID-19 doses go unused at rural Missouri mass vaccination events
Mass coronavirus vaccination events in rural Missouri regularly end with hundreds of remaining vaccines, records obtained by The Star show.
While the records show unused doses get redistributed to other providers and very few go to waste, it calls into question whether the state’s plan to have mass vaccine events in rural areas has been an efficient method to administer vaccinations.
In all, 28 mass vaccination events between Feb. 22 and Feb. 27 in rural Missouri resulted in 7,735 doses that remained unused after the events ended, compared to 47,143 vaccinations that were administered, according to records from the Missouri Department of Public Safety.
That means 16.4% of vaccines go unused at these events on average. Of the 28 mass vaccination events, only five ended with no remaining vaccines.
Meanwhile, vaccines have been scarce in Kansas City and St. Louis and residents and city leaders are clamoring for more access.
Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas said Friday he was frustrated by the news of unused vaccines at rural events.
“Trust me if we did an event for 10,000 people tomorrow in Arrowhead Stadium’s parking lot, we would get it done pretty quickly and I guarantee you, ain’t nothing getting wasted,” Lucas told The Star. “Particularly because we could put out the bat signal and get people out there in no time.”
Benton County held a two-day vaccination event at the Warsaw Shriners Club starting on Feb. 23. It ended with 1,810 vaccinations administered but 570 that remained unused.
Those unused doses were put in cold storage and used elsewhere.
Similarly, a Feb. 25 mass vaccination event in Kirksville resulted in 574 unused vaccines.
Gov. Mike Parson has largely defended the state’s vaccine distribution plan, insisting that no preference is given to rural parts of the state.
“Due to health care infrastructure, distribution methods may vary from one region to the next, but there is no division between rural and urban Missouri,” Parson tweeted on March 1.
Lucas this week sent a letter to the Federal Emergency Management Agency asking it to work with the Kansas City Health Department to hold mass vaccination events in the city.
“It’s frustrating to me because this is important for saving lives. More people are going to get COVID by not getting vaccines as efficiently as we need to,” Lucas said. “This is one of those where you don’t blame the supply, this is just the choices Missouri has made and that our consultants have recommended. Our consultants need to be fired.”
The Parson administration has consulted with The McChrystal Group, headed by former military general Stanley McChrystal, for its pandemic response.
Deloitte, another consultant for Missouri in its vaccination distribution program, noted in a Feb. 22 report to the Parson administration that 18% of Jackson County’s population that’s eligible for a vaccine under the state’s tiered prioritization plan has received a shot, while the state average was 27%.
Two days later, Parson tweeted: “Mass Vaccination events are designed to reach Missourians who may have a hard time getting a vaccine otherwise. In metro areas, hospitals receive the largest % of vaccines from the state allocation.”
The limited availability of vaccines in Kansas City is amplified by stories in recent weeks of mass vaccination events in rural Missouri attracting fewer people than the supply of available doses.
On Feb. 24, a mass vaccination event was held in Leopold, a town with a population of 69. Nearly 900 vaccines were administered at the city’s Knights of Columbus building, but records show that 1,061 went unused. That’s despite the health department administrator in Bollinger County opening up the event to anyone as the afternoon wore on, according to published reports.
Those unused doses from the Leopold event were sent to the Cape Girardeau public health department and a regional pharmacy that Missouri Department of Public Safety records say were capable of widespread distribution.
Cape Girardeau County in southeast Missouri has the distinction of being one of the counties that’s furthest along in its vaccination effort, with 20% of its population having received at least the first dose.
By comparison, Clay County has the highest percent of residents having received their first shot in the Kansas City area, with 13.2%. Jackson County is at 12.1%. St Louis is 10.2%.
The remaining vaccines at rural events usually don’t get wasted, but rather redistributed for use elsewhere or at some other event.
A Feb. 27 mass vaccination event at a high school in Unionville in northern Missouri resulted in 143 doses that were wasted. Beyond that, only nine doses have been wasted at mass vaccination events in Missouri, according to Department of Public Safety records.
“The wastage was the result of a variety of things: Needles dislodged, not all vials rendered 6 doses, there were no-shows and duplicate appointments for individuals and ultimately we ended up with extra vaccine drawn up that passed the time limit of availability,” said Joetta Hunt, the administrator of the Putnam County Health Department.
Indications are that the state may be shifting its attention toward getting more vaccines in urban areas.
The Parson administration has viewed the state’s vaccine distribution patterns through the state’s nine Missouri Highway Patrol divisions, which could include a dozen counties. Asked whether distribution efforts are even among those counties, Parson on Thursday said the state focuses only on the aggregate number of doses region-wide.
“How it’s distributed within that region could change from county to county,” he said. “You just got to look at the whole number we’re doing in each of these zones.”
Adam Crumbliss, director of community and public health for the Missouri Department of Health & Senior Services, said during a Thursday meeting of the Missouri Advisory Committee on Equitable COVID-19 Vaccine Distribution that the Missouri National Guard will start trying to increase its mass vaccination events in the Kansas City and St. Louis regions.
“Basically, now that we’ve gotten a lot of our rural communities some baseline vaccine distribution,” Crumbliss said, “we are going to be redeploying some of these efforts into other parts of our state.”
In Kansas City, that effort may not have come soon enough.
“If you are somebody at the city, particularly Black or brown, and you see something that makes it looks like your community is last in priority or getting leftovers, it kind of hurts,” Lucas said. “And it makes you feel worse about this whole process.”
The Star’s Jeanne Kuang contributed reporting.
This version updates the number of vaccinations administered after a clarification from the Missouri Department of Public Safety.
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