Beaufort Co. ranks 8th for most COVID-19 vaccinations in SC. Here’s what the data show
Beaufort County as of Wednesday ranked eighth in South Carolina for the most coronavirus vaccine doses administered per county, according to state data current as of Friday.
The state, though, has yet to detail how many residents per county have been inoculated. There’s no residency requirement to get a shot in the Palmetto State, so Phase 1a-eligible visitors have been free to get vaccinated around the Lowcountry.
That makes it impossible to adjust the area’s vaccine data by county population.
Health officials have released statewide data on the number of North Carolinians and Georgia residents vaccinated in South Carolina, but similar county-level information has yet to be published.
Regardless, it’s clear that vaccine providers in Beaufort County have been moving quickly to inoculate people:
Providers in the county as of Wednesday had given 31,847 first and second doses, ranking the county eighth statewide for the most shots in arms.
Beaufort County had administered roughly 4.2% of provided doses in the state as of Wednesday. The county accounted for 3.7% of South Carolina’s population in July 2019, according to U.S. Census Bureau estimates.
At least 22,904 people in Beaufort County as of late Thursday had received their first dose.
Disregarding the S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control’s confusing vaccine utilization rates, the county’s major vaccine sites, Beaufort Memorial and Hilton Head hospitals, have been quickly using up their first-dose allocations week to week, according to hospital officials.
Hilton Head Hospital, for example, as of Thursday had used 153% of its first dose Pfizer-BioNTech allotments since mid-December, the state reported. (DHEC calculates its utilization rates based on the assumption that each Pfizer vial contains five doses, which was the original expectation last year. The vials, though, actually contain a sixth or even seventh dose.)
Jasper County, meanwhile, ranked 20th in the state for most doses administered, according to DHEC data:
Providers in the county had administered 7,724 first and second doses as of Wednesday, and at least 5,096 people as of Thursday night had received their first dose.
Jasper County made up an estimated 0.58% of the state’s population in summer 2019, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. The county has provided about 1% of doses in the state.
Coastal Carolina Hospital, like the other local medical centers, has been quickly working through its weekly Pfizer allocations, according to its CEO.
There are 46 counties in South Carolina. Charleston, Greenville and Richland counties as of Wednesday had administered roughly 40% — 305,566 — of all 753,779 first and second doses given in the state so far.
‘It’s tough everywhere’
While local hospitals appear to be administering vaccines at a fast clip, the number of doses flowing into the state remains a major roadblock.
The demand for doses still far exceeds the supply, leaving seniors and others frustrated. Beaufort Memorial Hospital, for example, typically orders about 1,000 to 2,000 first doses per week, CEO Russell Baxley told The Island Packet and Beaufort Gazette during a Q&A event on Thursday.
But the medical center usually receives only 800 to 1,200 of those requested shots, Baxley said.
The hospital has a vaccine waitlist hovering between 8,000 and 10,000 people.
“We cannot get the vaccine we’re requesting,” he said, “and no one more than Beaufort Memorial — I can promise you — wants to vaccinate people and put this whole mess behind us.”
“Supply is so unpredictable,” Baxley added. “It’s tough everywhere.”
It’s all a numbers game. South Carolina typically receives about 76,000 first doses per week, based on the federal government’s allocation formula. More than 550,000 people as of Wednesday had received a first dose in the state, and Phase 1a includes almost 1.3 million residents.
That means Phase 1a could end by early April — at the current vaccination rate — and another 573,000 residents will likely become eligible for shots during Phase 1b, said Nick Davidson, DHEC’s senior deputy for public health, during the agency’s board meeting last week.
The Palmetto State simply hasn’t received enough doses yet to meet those needs.
What happens next?
President Joe Biden, during a town hall in Milwaukee on Tuesday, suggested that all Americans who want to get vaccinated will be able to do so by the end of July.
Pfizer and Moderna are both ramping up production, and Johnson & Johnson’s one-dose vaccine could be authorized for emergency use by the end of February.
Jeremy Clark, CEO of Hilton Head Regional Healthcare, and S.C. leaders, including Gov. Henry McMaster, have been optimistic that vaccine supply will increase in the near future.
But J&J will have only a few million doses on hand once its product is likely authorized by U.S. regulators.
And Davidson, of DHEC, recently said the state doesn’t know how many J&J doses it will initially receive.
“It’s difficult to plan more than three or four days in advance,” Baxley said on Thursday.
