Boone Hospital waiting for state approval to continue CPS staff vaccinations
COLUMBIA, Mo. (KMIZ)
Boone Hospital Center is at a standstill, waiting for coronavirus vaccines from the state health department to continue vaccinating Columbia Public School staff.
During the Columbia Board of Education meeting Monday night, CPS Superintendent Peter Stiepleman addressed concerns about eligible employees not receiving the vaccine from Boone Hospital.
The original plan was a flu vaccine agreement with Boone Hospital, which was approved by the Board of Education in December.
Under the agreement, Boone Hospital Center was planning to provide flu vaccinations to all district staff and eligible retirees and dependents for the next three years. The hospital and school district agreed to add coronavirus vaccinations to the agreement.
However, the state health department's recent vaccine distribution plan favoring hospitals does not include Boone Hospital as a distributor, meaning out of the 76,000 doses Missouri is receiving, Boone Hospital is not scheduled to get any of them.
Dr. Michael Szewczyk with Boone Hospital spoke at the board meeting Monday, explaining the recent issues with distribution.
University Hospital is the only organization in Columbia chosen as a distributor, despite the fact that the health department sent a letter to the state explaining how University Hospital, Boone Hospital and the Columbia/Boone County Health Department, could all handle 12,000 doses a week, Szewczyk said.
"Unfortunately, when the state made their decision, they only selected the university, which seemed a little unusual because in other cities that had two hospitals, for example, Jefferson City, both Capital Region and St. Mary’s were selected to get vaccine," he said.
The state also selected two hospitals to distribute the vaccine in other cities including, Springfield and Cape Girardeau.
Boone Hospital contacted the state health department, but Szewczyk said Boone did not get a clear answer why its request was denied.
"We did ask the university if they’d be willing to share some of their doses, but they felt they would be unable to do it," he said.
Stiepleman said teachers are wanting to know why they have not been vaccinated yet even if they are eligible in Phase 1B Tier 2 under the state's vaccine plan. That tier includes people with certain health conditions and those 65 and older.
“This has caused a lot of confusion for members in our community who have family members in states that border Missouri. Six of the eight states that border Missouri have begun vaccinating teachers," he said.
So far, 310 CPS staff members have been vaccinated in Phase 1A, but CPS as not been able to move on to vaccinating those at high risk after Boone Hospital stopped getting the vaccine three weeks ago.
With the amount of vaccine doses Region F is now receiving, officials assume it could take more than a year to finish vaccinating Phase 1B Tier 2.
"You don't need to be a math major to figure out that getting 3,000 a week and you have 190 thousand people to vaccinate it's going to take, just to get out of this group, which is phase 1b tier 2, it's going to take 64 weeks to do that," Szewczyk said.
Over in St. Louis County, officials said the state is also not providing promised vaccines. County officials said early last week the state promised 3,900 doses to arrive this week, but by Friday, the state said the county would not get any doses.
This is the third week in a row St. Louis County has not received any direct shipments of the vaccines, but instead has been using vaccine doses it got in a redistribution from a local hospital.
Back in mid-Missouri, Boone Hospital is continuing to ask for doses of the vaccine each week. If approved, the plan is to start vaccinating Tier 2 staff at CPS when those doses arrive.
