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Deep breath. Thread about State of Tennessee vaccination distribution, and how Shelby County seems to be getting significantly fewer doses than it is supposed to:
Yesterday @MBJSteimer reported that TN appears to be “shortchanging” Shelby in vaccine allocation. Task force member @pedschief: “The governor didn't send us as much vaccine. Shelby County has 14% of the state's population and we got 7% of the vaccine.” https://www.bizjournals.com/memphis/news/2021/01/21/shelby-county-vaccine-rollout.html
MBJ wanted to dive into the data and see what it shows. The state’s vaccine plan is complicated, but the main thing to know is that it mostly is based on county population: Each of the 95 counties gets roughly the same percentage of doses as every other county.
That means more raw number of doses in a bigger county than a small one, but percentage is supposed to match. The wrinkles to that are that 29 counties, including Shelby, get even more doses because of their “high social vulnerability index.”
And, about a third of the initial batch went to a federal plan to vaccinate residents and staff at skilled nursing facilities, which Shelby has lots of.
TL;DR so far: Tenn. counties should be getting roughly equal doses as a percentage of their population. And the variables favor Shelby getting an even larger share than other counties.
But, the reality is that the Shelby population isn’t being vaccinated as much as it should, according to the state’s plan. The following findings are based on the state’s reporting of vaccine delivery by county, as of Jan. 18, 2021, found here: https://data.tn.gov/t/Public/views/TennIISCOVID-19VaccineReporting/1STDOSE?%3AshowAppBanner=false&%3Adisplay_count=n&%3AshowVizHome=n&%3Aorigin=viz_share_link&%3Atoolbar=no&%3Aembed=yes
Shelby is dead last — 95th out of 95 counties — in percentage of population that has gotten the "first dose only." 2.12% of Shelby has gotten first dose. By comparison, the best overall, Henry County (Paris, TN), is at 10.56% of it population.
Shelby is much better in percentage of pop who has gotten 2nd dose. 1.50% of Shelby with second dose, placing it 12th out of 95 counties. Best county overall, Washington (Johnson City) is at 2.97% of pop getting second dose.
Adding first and second dose percentages together, 3.62% of Shelby population has gotten at least one dose of vaccine, ranking it 84th out of 95 counties. Henry (10.67%) and Washington (10.08%) are top two counties by percentage.
One caveat, noted by a health care professional tipster MBJ talked to, is that the second dose percentage may be double counting those who got the first dose in with the second dose. It’s complicated, but it looks like Shelby’s 1.50% might actually be 0.75%?
Does that also affect the pct reported of people having gotten the first dose? It’s difficult to say without clarity in how TN is reporting this info. The state declined MBJ’s request for an interview, and statement they provided does not shed light on numbers and what they mean.
What we can say based on what we know: Comparing apples to apples/applying the same criteria to every county, Shelby’s percentage of vaccine (“first dose only”) is five times worse than the best county in Tennessee. And it’s half as good as the state average.
And Shelby’s percentage of delivering any vaccines (“first dose only” plus “second dose”) is at least three times worse than the best county, and significantly lower than the state average.
The damning thing isn’t so much that Shelby is 95 out of 95 counties in a vaccine metric. Some county has to be last, and that alone doesn't necessarily mean the allotment is unfair.
But, Shelby is so far behind the state average, and so far behind the top counties, it does seem to reflect a true inequity in vaccine allocation.
Biggest caveat overall: Data shows vaccines administered, not necessarily how many doses counties have been given. We can only surmise how many doses have been disbursed to counties based on how many have been put in arms.
And, it's always possible that Shelby sucks really bad at giving doses and has a ton of unused vaccines on a shelf. But, that doesn't seem likely to me. SC Health Dept. has said numerous times, including this week, that they’re using all the doses they’re getting.
The second-biggest caveat to the data is that Shelby may actually be worse off than the data shows. Health Dept officials have rightly pointed out how much health care infrastructure Shelby has compared to many other counties.
SC Health Dept has used that to footnote why Shelby has been slower moving past Phase 1A1 of vaccinating front-line health care workers. Other cos. may have only dozens/hundreds of those workers, whereas Shelby has thousands. That’s why Shelby will move through 1A1 more slowly.
But, that would not affect the percentage of the population getting vaccinated compared to other counties, it would just change which element of the population is receiving it at the given time.
Further, if counties with more health care-eligible workers are supposed to get more doses — then logic suggests Shelby should actually be getting a larger percentage than other counties.
Other counties may move through phases more quickly, but Shelby should be getting a higher percentage in these early stages, because we have more people in the 1A1 phase. Finally, since Shelby is one of 29 vulnerable counties, we should be getting yet another bump in allotment.
Instead, when it comes to vaccine distribution, Shelby is ranked one of the last, if not the very last, among Tennessee’s 95 counties.
I can’t tell you why, I can only tell you that it is so, based on the state’s own numbers and plan.
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I can’t tell you why, I can only tell you that it is so, based on the state’s own numbers and plan.
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