Tero Vesalainen | Dreamstime
A state health official said no harm will come to Shelby Countians who received an expired COVID-19 vaccine from the Shelby County Health Department, though the shot may be less effective.
Dr. Lisa Piercey, Commissioner of the Tennessee Department of Health (TDH), said Tuesday, March 2nd, that many from the Memphis area have contacted her office recently, worried they received an expired dose of the vaccine. Piercey said many have a paper record of their vaccine from the health department that shows their shot had expired, sometimes more than two weeks before they received it.
Piercey said her office investigated, and she believes many of these instances can be linked to a clerical error by the health department. Many sheets with an expired date were printed and taken to a vaccine site here, she said. However, TDH is not “resting on that assertion as a final decision. We’re verifying those cases ourselves.” But she said TDH believes the “vast majority” of the cases were clerical.
State of Tennessee
Dr. Lisa Piercey
“Nothing bad is going to happen if you get an expired vaccine,” Piercey said. “The worst thing that can happen is that the vaccine is not as effective as a temperature-controlled or unexpired vaccine would be.”
A state investigation of the health department’s management of the vaccine rollout here uncovered 2,400 doses that had to be discarded because they were allowed to be defrosted but weren’t used. State health officials found six instances of these expiration events in February. The investigation results in the resignation of SCHD director Alisa Haushalter on Friday, February 26th.
Piercey said her team and personnel from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) are on the ground in Shelby County. They are pulling together data to help ensure the temperature integrity of vaccines here.
State of Tennessee
State officials will begin vaccinating those in the 1c population beginning Monday. The group includes those aged 16 and older with high-risk medical conditions like obesity, COPD, and diabetes. Piercey said this group includes more than 1.1 million Tennesseans and the state “unfortunately has high rates of chronic diseases.”
Moving into the next phase comes as a “large surplus” of vaccines are expected to flow to Tennessee in the next two to three weeks. This surge of vaccines includes the newly approved Johnson & Johnson vaccine, Piercey said.
