Mayo defends vaccine roll-out, says it has started setting aside doses for other health providers

Facing some scrutiny for their mostly in-house approach to distributing the Covid vaccine, Minnesota medical centers — including Mayo Clinic — have slowly started administering doses to individuals outside of their facilities.

Olmsted County Public Health officials said Thursday the county’s medical centers have started vaccinating people in the third priority group of Phase 1A — that includes dentists, optometrists, and other patient-facing health care workers that don’t necessarily work in a hospital setting. 

“Nearly all” 1A3 workers had at least been contacted to set up an appointment, said Amy Evans, Olmsted County Public Health’s vaccine distribution leader, making it likely that the priority group will reach the final stages of inoculation later next month February.

In a separate Thursday briefing, Dr. Abinash Virk, infectious disease expert at Mayo, said the Clinic had expanded its vaccine offerings to include patients age 80 and older after receiving approval from the state last Friday. Clinic staff identified over 6,000 80-plus patients in Mayo’s southeast Minnesota system that would be eligible for the vaccine and started sending out invitations earlier this week.

“All of this happened very quickly,” said Dr. Virk. “We got our doses on Wednesday morning, and we have to get 90 percent of them into arms three days after we get it, and 100 percent in a week.”

Lines were out the door and indoor settings were packed at local vaccination clinics Thursday evening as seniors flocked to get their first inoculation. Mayo expects to vaccinate roughly 1,800 people in this category by Friday.

The Clinic’s offering is separate from the statewide pilot program entering its second week, giving people 65 or older, in addition to a select few educators and child care workers, the chance to get vaccinated. More than 226,000 seniors — one in every four living in Minnesota — applied for this week’s lottery, with roughly 9,500 doses available.

‘There has been no clarity’

In recent days, some have criticized the Clinic’s vaccine priority list, with non-patient-facing Mayo employees receiving vaccination while non-Clinic affiliated workers in Phase 1A3 are left wanting for the time being. 

Mayo is not alone: some of the Twin Cities’ largest hospital networks have prioritized vaccinating their employee base over non-affiliated health care workers, with a select few going as far to vaccinate teleworkers deemed “essential” to system operations.

The loose interpretation of the guidelines has raised concerns among officials inside the Minnesota Department of Health.

“The health systems have been far more lenient in vaccinating people than was intended, and that’s concerning,” said MDH Infectious Disease Director Kris Ehresmann, according to a report from MPR News. “We felt like we were pretty clear in the guidance.” 

Asked about Ehresmann’s comments, Dr. Virk said some Clinic workers may have “gotten through the process” and received vaccination even if they weren’t supposed to, adding the entire network had to be set up “very quickly.” She refuted Ehresmann’s statements, however, that MDH had been “pretty clear” in their instructions — saying there was “no guidance” from the state’s health department on who was responsible to vaccinate those non-affiliated health care workers.

Without set-in-stone instructions, Dr. Virk said, Mayo decided to keep vaccinating as many employees as possible. If they waited too long for guidance, some doses might have ended up expiring.

“The guidance regarding who was responsible for unaffiliated providers in the community wasn’t clarified until we, as Mayo and Olmsted County Public Health, asked ‘who’s vaccinating them?,’” said Dr. Virk. “The vaccine we’re getting is just enough for our own people, so what is MDH doing to help us vaccinate them? There were no allocated doses given to us for community providers.”

Moving forward, Dr. Virk says the Clinic has now started setting aside some doses from each shipment for non-affiliated health care workers.

The palpable tension, here and elsewhere, over who is next in line for the vaccine has largely been the result of lower-than-expected shipment numbers. After receiving close to 10,000 doses in one shipment early in the process, Dr. Virk said the Clinic received roughly 3,000 doses this week still more than the 1,700-dose average shipment they had seen through January.

A more stable vaccine supply may be on the horizon, however, and in comments Thursday afternoon, Public Health Director Graham Briggs chalked the issue up to miscommunication during a very stressful process, with demand for the vaccine continuing to rapidly outpace supply.

“I think what we’re seeing is, as we go through priority groups, it’s a gray area of how we do that,” said Briggs. “In a pandemic, just like life in general, nothing is perfect.” 

What about the new variants?

Briggs says a “handful” of Minnesotans have contracted the UK variant of the virus, known to be more contagious than previous Covid strains. Additionally, a Minnesotan became the first American to contract the variant of the virus first detected in Brazil. 

These emerging variants, in addition to a South African strain identified in America for the first time Thursday, have sent scientists scrambling to identify whether or not they will worsen the severity of the pandemic — or, perhaps even more troubling, blunt the effectiveness of vaccines.

Speaking Thursday, Briggs said the new variants were “something to keep an eye on,” but no evidence yet existed that would require local officials to raise any alarm bells.

“We are getting more confident that these new variants tend to be more easily transmitted,” said Briggs. “That’s definitely the case for the variants found in the UK and Brazil, but they don't appear to bring a greater risk of death or severe illness, and our vaccines are still a good match as well.”

What’s the local situation look like?

Case numbers in Olmsted County have stayed relatively flat over the past two weeks, as vaccinations start to slow the spread of the virus in the community.

Public Health reported 373 new Covid-19 cases this week, compared to the 368 reported the previous week. It’s the first time since mid-October that case counts in consecutive weeks stayed under 400 apiece. 

Percent-positive test rates continue to hover around 10 percent, as it has since November. Seven-day rolling averages have continued to steadily fall since the November spike, though, with the current number hovering around 40. To return to “pre-spike” levels, however, the rolling average number would have to dip below 30. 

As of Tuesday, over 23,000 people in Olmsted County had received at least one vaccine dose, good for just over 15 percent of the total population.

Isaac Jahns is a Rochester native and a 2019 graduate of the Missouri School of Journalism. He reports on politics, business and music for Med City Beat.

Cover photo licensed via Getty