Looking for a COVID vaccine in Charlotte? The search will get easier with more supply

The days — and late nights — of frantically seeking scarce COVID-19 vaccine appointments in the Charlotte area may be nearing their end as supply gradually expands.

Dr. David Priest, Novant Health infectious diseases specialist, is optimistic the region will soon see a surplus of scheduling options — even as a large number of unvaccinated North Carolinians in Group 5 now have their first chance this week to make an appointment. On Wednesday, everyone ages 16 and older became eligible to get their shot.

“Fairly quickly we’re going to move out of a phase where it’s really hard to find a vaccine to (having) slots and we need more people to use them,” Priest told reporters recently.

“I worry a little bit that we’re saturating the individuals in the community who are really desperate to get vaccinated, and now we’re moving into a phase where individuals who really weren’t that interested are the ones that are left. We have to continue to educate and help them understand the importance of (vaccines) so we can help them collectively get back to the lives we want to lead.”

As the rollout began, weekly dosage allotments for the COVID-19 vaccine were sporadic in North Carolina, according to data obtained by the Charlotte Observer through a public records request.

For example, Mecklenburg’s weekly allocation went from 4,875 in the first week of January to 11,450 in the second week, a 135% increase.

In March, Mecklenburg’s weekly average allocation was 27,566.

In the earliest weeks of vaccinations, shots were prioritized by coronavirus exposure risks — including profession, age and underlying chronic health conditions — intended to blunt the pandemic’s devastating blows on the most vulnerable.

The different eligibility groups created a first come, first served situation that’s similar to searching for a parking spot in a crowded lot, said Artie Zillante, chair of the economics department at UNC Charlotte.

“Those search costs can be reduced by a market system (we could let people pay for a reserved parking spot, and we could let people pay for a reserved spot to get the vaccine), but as people have different financial resources a market allocation would seem less equitable to many than the current system being used to distribute the vaccine,” Zillante told the Observer by email.

In a matter of weeks, the figurative parking lot will likely empty out, some officials suggest.

Supply of vaccines increasing

When vaccine supply surpasses demand, all North Carolinians — including physicians, clergy, public figures, friends and relatives — should encourage community members to get vaccinated, Gov. Roy Cooper says.

Cooper on Tuesday said supply will “pretty quickly” overtake demand.

“We’re going to have plenty of supply to get every person vaccinated who wants a vaccine...” Cooper said during a news briefing. “At some point, we will hit that peak of supply exceeding demand, and we need to continue to push up the demand until we get as many people vaccinated as possible.”

Demand continues to be so high locally that website crashes are common. It’s an inconvenience but high demand is a good problem to have, says Dr. Arin Piramzadian, chief medical officer for StarMed, one of Mecklenburg’s major vaccine providers.

“We want people to want to get vaccinated,” said Piramzadian, who anticipates the crushing demand will continue throughout April on StarMed’s scheduling portal.

“We want them to know that we are doing our best. I would have loved to have 100,000 vaccines available for this week, but obviously that’s not the reality.”

Early erratic rollout

From mid-December through late March, North Carolina has shipped 2.8 million first doses of the COVID-19 vaccines to county health departments, data show.

This does not include dosages shipped to pharmacies or long-term care facilities.

But the rollout has been erratic, with the number of doses counties receive increasing and decreasing on a weekly basis.

The fluctuations have been persistent across the state — from urban counties to rural ones and from the coast to the mountains.

From January to February, examples from state health officials show how county allotments changed:

▪ - 55% for Watauga County, which includes Boone

▪ - 19% for Durham County

▪ + 27% for Mecklenburg County

▪ + 240% for Pitt County, which includes Greenville

Dr. Mandy Cohen, secretary of the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services, said vaccine providers are asked every week what new supply they can handle — and if they can commit to distributing doses quickly and equitably.

“There are certain communities where we actually see lower rates of vaccination and we actually need more vaccine to go to those communities and more providers,” Cohen told reporters Tuesday, without singling out specific counties. In other regions, Cohen said, North Carolina has “done a good job getting vaccines to those communities, and we just need to keep up that pace.”

Supply fluctuations were especially noticeable in December and January, when production of the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines was ramping up.

Allocations to county health departments statewide, for example, jumped from 85,800 to 140,400 in the first two weeks of North Carolina’s vaccination effort. They fell to 82,500 two weeks later.

“Vaccine allocations were a bit erratic initially with limited supplies, which made it difficult to plan for vaccination clinics,” Dennis Joyner, public health director for Union County, said in an email to the Observer.

Joyner said recent weeks have been more consistent, with each county given a baseline projection. The projections allow for local officials to plan and distribute the vaccine better, said Ryan Jury, Wake County’s mass vaccination branch director.

Jury said Wake’s current baseline weekly projection is about 19,000 doses, but the total usually increases based on the number of vaccination events the county holds or available supply.

In early March — when the Johnson & Johnson vaccine hit the market — Wake’s allotment spiked from 19,200 to 32,900.

“The system is built around maximizing and using as much of the vaccine supply ... that is available at a given time,” Jury said. “And these fluctuations are a representation of what that supply looks like.”

The encouraging news, he said, is that supplies are increasing.

At Novant, the hospital system was expecting its biggest shipment to date this week, Priest said. The 27,000-dose allocation included all three vaccines currently authorized for emergency use, with the Johnson & Johnson one-dose regimen representing the largest share.

Mecklenburg County Public Health received its second largest shipment this week. That included the county’s baseline allocation of 4,680 first doses of the Pfizer vaccine, plus 1,000 Moderna first doses and 1,900 J&J doses, Deputy Public Health Director Raynard Washington told the Observer.

The county saw its largest vaccine shipment the week of March 10, when Mecklenburg, Novant and Atrium Health jointly requested 10,000 extra doses.

Atrium infectious diseases expert Dr. Lewis McCurdy urged people to stay patient as vaccinations in Group 5 get underway.

Everyone who wants a vaccine should expect to find an appointment slot within the next two to four weeks, McCurdy told reporters Tuesday. He acknowledged that even some of his own patients who’d hope to get immunized in March could not find any opening until May, though that timeline is poised to accelerate.

“We have been hampered by the vaccine availability up until this point,” McCurdy said.

“I don’t think it’s going to be a magic thing where all of a sudden we have enough for everyone tomorrow. But I do think over the next several weeks that it’ll be easier and easier to find that spot for your vaccine.”

Hannah Smoot contributed to this report.

This story was originally published April 7, 2021 at 12:39 PM.