In a news conference on Friday, Jan. 22, Prisma Health announced it would stop providing vaccines at its sites to those who come to a site without a proper appointment.
Prisma delivered over 9,300 doses of the COVID-19 vaccine in South Carolina on Jan. 21, close to Prisma’s goal of 10,000 doses daily, according to Dr. Saria Saccocio, Prisma’s ambulatory chief medical officer and co-chair of the health system’s vaccine task force. That would make the number of doses given out by Prisma so far to be a little over 59,000.
A tenth of those doses were given at Greenville’s Kmart vaccination site. Saccocio said Prisma could make their goal of 10,000 doses on Friday, Jan. 22.
“This is thanks to our rapid mobilization of staffing and our enormous success and quickly standing up to high volume community vaccination sites in addition to our 11 hospital sites,” Saccocio said.
However, the health system no longer has excess inventory.
“Starting tomorrow, Saturday, January 23, we cannot take any walk-ins inside our vaccination site. We can only take people who scheduled appointments in the CDC VAMS system for that day,” said Saccocio.
Those who are up for their second dose of the vaccine will be allowed to receive it.
Saccocio said Prisma Health had requested 60,000 doses from the state for next week.
Read more: Kmart Plaza near Greenville Memorial Hospital to be vaccine site starting Jan. 18
Saccocio said in early February mobile units will also be used to help vaccinate community members. Details of those units will be announced in the weeks ahead.
Prisma also is seeking to have access to the other U.S. Food and Drug Administration-approved COVID-19 vaccine. Right now, the health system only has access to the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, but not the Moderna vaccine. Both vaccines use similar methods to protect against the novel coronavirus.
“Each of us has a responsibility to do our part to lower the spread of this disease. We are relying on each other to curtail the spread of this deadly virus,” Saccocio said, urging individuals to help neighbors and other community members register to take the vaccine.
You can register for the vaccine here: https://prismahealth.org/coronavirus/covid-19-vaccine.
Find out more information about COVID-19 here: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-nCoV/index.html
