Inside the efforts to expand rural Jasper County’s access to COVID-19 vaccines
More than 14,000 doses of coronavirus vaccines have been administered in Jasper County. Coastal Carolina Hospital alone has provided 6,588 first Pfizer-BioNTech doses to people who are eligible.
Yet only 2,768 Jasper County residents have started inoculation, according to data from the S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control.
Just 199 of those people live in the county’s rural 29934 and 29943 ZIP codes.
Hardeeville Mayor Harry Williams said those data reflect a challenge for local leaders.
Residents south of the Broad River in Beaufort County scrambled to get shots from Coastal Carolina Hospital in the early days of Phase 1a, Williams said.
The hospital is close to several population centers in Beaufort County, he said, and it makes sense that seniors, including those in Sun City, were booking appointments wherever they could.
Jasper County residents living near the hospital, he added, were also first in line during Phase 1a.
Those trends are borne out in the DHEC data: Rural parts of the county have fallen behind in the state’s vaccination campaign.
“They’re distant. They have transportation issues,” Williams said of rural residents. “Because of the broadband situation, they are the least technologically savvy.”
The Hardeeville mayor, churches, senior centers and Coastal Carolina Hospital are now working together to expand vaccine access around the county.
The local coalition offers a glimpse into the grassroots efforts underway across much of South Carolina, as pastors, nonprofits, elected officials and others try to get more vaccines into rural communities.
Data issue
The number of vaccinated residents in Jasper County is likely an undercount, to some degree. Hundreds of Sun City North residents are probably listed as Beaufort County vaccine recipients in DHEC’s data — even if they live in Jasper County — due to a ZIP code-level data issue.
But even if, hypothetically, 1,500 vaccine recipients in Sun City North were added to Jasper County’s inoculation data, only 4,268 Jasper County residents would have at least one dose.
The county’s four biggest vaccinators — Coastal Carolina Hospital, the Hardeeville Walmart, a Hardeeville Publix and the Jasper County Health Department — have administered at least 8,043 first Pfizer and Moderna doses in total.
Three of those facilities are just down the road from Sun City.
Jasper County has 23,501 residents who are 15 or older, according to U.S. Census Bureau estimates.
‘A lot of running around’
In comparison to rural spots like Tillman or Robertville, residents along U.S. 278 in southern Beaufort and Jasper counties were more likely to have good internet access during Phase 1a, Williams said, and able to spend hours navigating the finicky Vaccine Administration Management System, or VAMS.
(Coastal Carolina Hospital uses VAMS to manage inoculations and has administered at least 73% of all doses given in Jasper County.)
Mamie Brown, 71, who lives with her husband in the rural Tarboro area along U.S. 321, said she tried to use VAMS when Phase 1a opened, but wasn’t able to book an appointment. She ultimately got the Moderna vaccine in early February at the Jasper County Health Department in Ridgeland. The health department doesn’t use VAMS to schedule vaccinations. Brown scheduled her shot over the phone.
“There was a lot of running around,” she said.
Brown’s glad she got the vaccine, she said, but knows other people in Jasper County may struggle to find a dose. Her husband’s nearby cousin, for example, doesn’t have a computer and doesn’t drive, she said. The cousin wants to get vaccinated, but has to rely on his family to snag an appointment.
Brown also thinks of the friends she met at the Robertville senior center before COVID-19 hit. The Jasper County Council on Aging runs the center.
“Most of those people don’t drive. A lot of them don’t have family members. A lot of them live by themselves,” she said.
“We used to play bingo and exercise and do all kinds of things. We can’t do that no more. We can’t even come together anymore.”
March 5 event
Williams, the Hardeeville mayor, said he and Joel Taylor, CEO of Coastal Carolina Hospital, were both concerned that rural Jasper County residents were struggling to access the vaccines after Phase 1a eligibility expanded to South Carolinians 70 or older in mid-January.
So Williams, Taylor and several Jasper County organizations partnered to set up a March 5 vaccination event at the Hardeeville Middle School.
Agape Family Life Center, St. Stephen AME Church in Hardeeville, the Council on Aging and others joined together to promote the event, spread the word among local congregations and get rural residents to the school.
“We did everything pen and paper, and then the staff put them in the VAMS system after the fact,” Williams said. “That’s what people need. People need simple ways to register.”
More than 600 Moderna doses were administered, the mayor said.
Lila Resh, executive director of the Council on Aging, said her organization got at least 50 seniors to sign up after distributing fliers advertising the event.
“The main thing that the seniors are struggling with is not having access to computers,” Resh said, “and not knowing how to use them.”
“We just reached out to the community and asked who still needed to have this done.”
Ponchitta Young, assistant director of Agape Family Life Center, said the Hardeeville nonprofit advertised the vaccine event at its food bank, among other things.
Some residents had questions about the shots, Young said. Are they safe? Do they hurt? Do they cost anything?
“The few people who might have had some skepticism for whatever reason, we were able to explain” those answers, she said. The outreach “made them a little more comfortable,” Young added.
Rev. L. Vanessa Johnson, of St. Stephen AME Church, agreed with Young. Other than the county’s internet issues, vaccine hesitancy is another challenge for the area, Johnson said.
“I’ve actually heard people say things like ‘You get that shot and they’re putting something in your DNA’ or ... ‘Well, I heard somebody died from it’ or ... ‘I just don’t feel like being a guinea pig.’ I hear that one a lot,” she said. “A lot of it is mistrust, misinformation.”
The pastor said she got vaccinated and is encouraging others to do the same. She’s been working to build trust among community members about COVID-19-related issues since the pandemic began, Johnson said.
The church held a coronavirus testing event last summer, has regularly distributed COVID-19 information in pamphlets and has yet to resume in-person services, Johnson said.
“The level of trust that comes with communities, (in) my experience, has been when they don’t see this as something that just came out of nowhere. They see it as a continuum, and that’s what we try to present it as,” Johnson said. “So if you trust us, and if you trust that we are trying to address your needs as individuals in this community, then ultimately when we go to the next step and we say ‘the vaccines,’ that you’ll trust, because you’ve established a relationship with us.
“Weigh your options and then come to your conclusion and ... trust that we wouldn’t be supporting something if we thought that it was going to harm you. ... We’re not going to push you to a brink, we’re not going to tell you you got to have this, but we’re going to push that and say to you, ‘You should have it, based upon the information we have.’”
What’s next?
Agape Family Life Center is planning to hold a vaccine event sometime in April, Young said. Coastal Carolina Hospital will host a second-dose vaccine clinic for those inoculated on March 5. And Williams hopes the various community organizations can continue to work together in the months to come.
But he stressed that future events depend on the county’s vaccine allocations.
While the nation’s vaccine production has ramped up, and President Joe Biden says there will be enough doses to inoculate all adult Americans by the end of May, demand still outweighs supply.
Williams encouraged DHEC to distribute single-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccines to places like Jasper County. (The state has been sending J&J doses to independent pharmacies in rural areas, but only one in Jasper County has received a shipment.)
“Say, ‘OK, I’m going to give an X amount of dosages to events like what Coastal Carolina set up for rural Jasper County.’ Say, ‘OK, this is hospital A, hospital B, you service rural counties, set something up like we did,’” Williams said.
Note: Data in this story are up to date as of Friday afternoon.
