SC preparing to distribute COVID-19 vaccine once approved

SOUTH CAROLINA — In South Carolina, state leaders are signing medical providers up to administer the coronavirus vaccine. That means people will need to be trained and providers must be able to properly store the vaccine.

The South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control told Channel 9 it has 310 providers around the state interested in giving the vaccine once it arrives.

South Carolina plans to distribute the vaccine first to these groups of people, among others:

• Frontline health care workers
• Residents of nursing homes/long term care
• Critical infrastructure employees (government, transportation, EMS/law enforcement, energy, food/agriculture, financial, teachers)

According to Dr. Joanna Jackson, an expert in health care policy and management at Winthrop University, the list of people who get the vaccine early includes people whose jobs are so essential that if they don’t show up for work, the community could suffer.

“There’s nothing wrong with it being a broad sort of scope so they can include those who are critical,” Dr. Jackson said. “But really that relates to grocery store workers, the sort of things that keep people alive and keep them healthy. We need pharmacies open, we need grocery stores.”

DHEC is expecting to see the vaccine in South Carolina in mid- to late December. They don’t have any information yet about how many doses they’ll be given, but they expect those numbers to start small and then expand in the following weeks.

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Cox Media Group