COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) - The lawmakers who write South Carolina’s budget voted Monday to advance a $208 million coronavirus pandemic relief bill to speed up COVID-19 vaccination efforts.
The House Ways and Means Committee voted unanimously to move the legislation, which would give the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control $63 million to continue combatting the pandemic. The Medical University of South Carolina would receive $45 million, and another $100 million would be placed in a reserve account to help hospitals and other vaccine providers offset costs.
The money, drawn from state surplus dollars, would help cover the costs of testing and vaccinations, personal protective equipment and other expenses.
“In our opinion, no money should be spared when it comes to the lives and economic lives of our citizens,” said Rep. Bill Herbkersman, chair of the Ways and Means health care subcommittee, last week.
The relief bill follows a rocky start to the vaccine rollout. In early weeks, the state’s low inoculation and vaccine utilization rates drew criticism from lawmakers. After the health department opened up vaccine access to people aged 70 and older, demand quickly outpaced supply, with some hospitals canceling appointments after tens of thousands of people signed up, leading many seniors to express frustration and confusion with the appointment process.
State legislators drilled down last week on details of the state’s vaccine plan, questioning state health officials, hospital executives and others involved in the rollout. Health officials have said the state only gets about 63,000 first doses weekly, the primary limiting factor to getting shots in arms faster. Officials say they do not expect to see more doses than that any time soon.
The agency says it will have a new call center to address vaccine questions up and running this week after its existing hotline was swamped with thousands of calls earlier this month. DHEC is also creating a centralized statewide platform people can use to schedule vaccine appointments.
Gov. Henry McMaster, who has spent the past week touring vaccine sites across the state, said hospitals have also significantly ramped up vaccine distribution after officials cleared up misunderstandings about whether to reserve first doses as second doses.
McMaster has urged hospitals, the state’s main vaccine administrators so far, to use up all their doses before the next week’s shipment arrives. Previously, some hospitals had been hanging onto doses because of uncertainty about future shipments.
The Department of Health and Environmental Control said Friday that all the doses the state has received have now been used or earmarked for future appointments.
As of Sunday, South Carolina had administered 277,258 of the 542,750 doses received from the federal government. It had utilized 81% of the 274,950 Pfizer doses received and 29% of the 64,400 Moderna doses not allocated to long-term care facility residents and staff.
With limited vaccine supplies, DHEC leaders say they are leaving the agency’s governor-appointed board with the decision on how to equitably distribute doses to providers across the state’s 46 counties. Agency officials will present several models for vaccine allocation based on data such as county populations or health factors among residents to the board Tuesday.
South Carolina currently ranks second in the country for new COVID-19 cases per capita, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. There were 1,254.9 new cases per 100,000 people in South Carolina over the past two weeks, and the rolling average number of daily new cases has decreased by 8.3% in the last two weeks.
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Follow AP’s coverage of the pandemic at https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-pandemic and https://apnews.com/UnderstandingtheOutbreak.
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Liu is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.
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