Supply shortage: Sedgwick County to limit next round of vaccine to those over 90

The COVID-19 vaccine is in such short supply in the Wichita area that the county health department plans to initially limit its second phase of vaccinations to those aged 90 or older, Sedgwick County officials said Tuesday.

Gov. Laura Kelly is expected to announce a move into the second phase of the state’s vaccination program later this week, expanding eligibility to anyone 65 or older. But it could be weeks or months before the youngest in that age group are vaccinated in the Wichita area.

The move comes amid pressure from Trump administration officials who told states last week to begin vaccinating anyone 65 or older. At the same time, Operation Warp Speed, a federal public-private partnership aimed at developing and distributing the vaccine, has not provided Kansas with enough doses of the vaccine to carry out that directive.

Almost 77,000 people in Sedgwick County are in that age group, according to Census data. Deputy County Manager Tim Kaufman said Tuesday in a briefing with county commissioners that instead of opening vaccinations to the entire 65-plus population, the county will “focus on people that are most likely to be negatively impacted by coronavirus and the folks that are most likely to die from coronavirus.”

“We’re going to have to do it incrementally,” Kaufman said of the age groups. “And it may be in one-year or five-year or six-month increments. It’s really going to depend on how much vaccine (the county receives).”

Unknown factors

Sedgwick County leaders expect the sluggish rollout of the COVID-19 vaccine to continue at a snail’s pace until the national supply catches up to the demand.

So far, the rollout has been plagued by confusion, reporting lags and decentralization that has left the public and elected officials largely in the dark about the status of the state’s mass vaccination plan.

“The problem is there’s not enough (vaccine),” said Dr. Lee Norman, the secretary of the Kansas Department of Health and Environment. “That’s been the problem we’re unable to slay.”

Kansas receives roughly 1% of the vaccines manufactured under Operation Warp Speed, Norman said. As of Tuesday, KDHE had received 200,000 doses and administered 125,479. An even smaller percentage has gone to the Sedgwick County Health Department, which has administered 9,460 doses to healthcare workers since Dec. 23.

Officials in Sedgwick County, the state’s most populous county, don’t know when the next shipment will come from the state, how many doses it will include or whether the vaccines will be from Pfizer or Moderna, which have significantly different storage requirements and second-dose schedules.

The Kansas Department of Health and Environment last week sent 1,400 doses to Sedgwick County. The county is holding on to that supply to ensure it has enough doses to provide a second shot to healthcare workers.

Those 90 or older who want the vaccine won’t be able to schedule an appointment until the new shipment arrives. They will have to schedule an appointment and bring a form of identification that includes proof of age to the clinic at the Intrust Bank Arena.

“We will begin to schedule appointments as soon as we’re confident that that vaccine is going to be here,” Kaufman said.

Long-term care facilities

County officials don’t know how many Wichita-area nursing homes residents have been vaccinated.

The Sedgwick County Health Department is responsible for vaccinating any long-term care residents whose facilities are not enrolled in a federal pharmacy partnership with Walgreens and CVS. But the county doesn’t have a list of facilities it needs to help.

“We’re trying to get information from KDHE, if they have that available to them, so that they can identify all the long-term care facilities,” Kaufman said. “We don’t have that information. … We don’t have all the data that we need to do this work.”

Walgreens has not provided data on long-term care facility vaccinations in Kansas or Sedgwick County. County Manager Tom Stolz said Tuesday that Walgreens has started going into nursing homes and providing the first round of shots.

Stolz said CVS has administered vaccines in other Kansas counties, but not Sedgwick County, as of last week.

CVS had administered 8,260 doses across the state as of Tuesday, according to data provided by a company spokesperson, providing vaccines to 136 out of 217 facilities partnered with the pharmacy. It’s unclear if any of those are in Sedgwick County.

Sedgwick County officials also don’t know who else is providing the vaccine in the county.

“We as a county need to know who are our local partners that will be given vaccination access,” County Manager Tom Stolz said. “Because we need to now be coordinating with them and getting logistics set with them so that when we do get vaccines over the next few weeks and months, we can manage this efficiently. But we can’t do that without a contact list.”

This story was originally published January 20, 2021 at 5:02 AM.