Low Doses Force Morristown COVID-19 Vaccine Site To Alter Course

MORRISTOWN, NJ — The Zufall Health Center felt excited to become part of New Jersey's COVID-19 vaccination plans. The federally qualified health center, which has a Morristown facility, couldn't wait to serve its base of 40,000 patients, who almost all make low income.

The Zufall Health Center's patient base represents a slice of the United States, but so did its efforts to administer COVID-19 vaccines. What began as an optimistic process eventually became hampered with too few doses, high demand and the unpredictability hovering around America's vaccination plans.

In the past two weeks, Zufall took a step back. The organization didn't receive enough doses to innoculate eligible members of the public, so they limited COVID-19 vaccines to only their patients as of Jan. 18. Zufall also no longer appears on the state's list of public vaccine sites.

"As a result, we did sort of ask the state to take us off of their public list," said Zufall CEO Eva Turbiner, "because we were getting hundreds and hundreds of calls from the general public. And we’ve been redirecting those folks, of course, to the state and county and other sources."

Smooth Sailing to Start

Zufall Health, which has facilities in five New Jersey counties, received its first COVID-19 vaccine doses just before Christmas. The health center has administered about 1,500 COVID-19 vaccine doses as of Tuesday, Turbiner told Patch.

At first, New Jersey made it easy for Zufall to vaccinate those eligible without excluding their patients. When the state first opened eligibility for health-care workers, Zufall provided doses for their staff.

Then they vaccinated school nurses in Morristown and Dover — another town where Zufall has a facility — along with Planned Parenthood personnel, partner health-care workers and some employees in private practices.

Zufall didn't get bogged down when New Jersey opened eligibility for police and fire professionals. They vaccinated first-responders in Morristown, Dover and surrounding communities.

Obstacles Ensue

Then the state opened eligibility Jan. 13 to people 65 and older or with qualifying medical issues. That was good news for a sizeable portion of Zufall's patients awaiting the vaccine. But that was when the health center also reached the point where they couldn't vaccinate the public anymore.

"Our mission is to take care of those folks who really are not necessarily able to navigate the regular health-care system," Turbiner said. "They may not have insurance. They may not have a car. They may not speak English. They may not have hours to sit in front of a computer screen and hit refresh to get an appointment at a mega site."

Morris County now has five public COVID-19 vaccine sites: the Morris County Megasite in Rockaway, RMG Urgent Care Center-Ledgewood, and ShopRite Pharmacies in Greater Morristown, Flanders and Lincoln Park.

The New Jersey Department of Health has tallied 47,119 vaccine doses administered in Morris County as of Wednesday. So Morris County and the state haven't been able to get very far in New Jersey's plan to inoculate 70 percent of adults in six months.

Gov. Phil Murphy has acknowledged that New Jersey's vaccine supply falls way under the demand. But he's urged patience, and he feels optimistic that President Joe Biden's administration can increase vaccine allocation to the Garden State.

The Unpredictability Factor

But low doses aren't the only issue, Turbiner says. Zufall also receives a different amount of COVID-19 vaccines every week. The health center doesn't know until Thursday what they're going to get the following Tuesday.

"Every week, it’s a different number," Turbiner said. "This week in Dover, we got no first doses, and we got only second doses. In Morristown, we got a few hundred."

But they're putting the vaccines to use in underserved communities. On Wednesday, Zufall administered 100 doses to seniors in public housing at the Morristown Housing Authority.

Much would need to happen for the health center to reopen vaccine signups to the public. The COVID-19 vaccines and syringes come free. But they receive no outside funding for administering the vaccines, so they must allocate their own resources for staff to administer doses. That's another reason Zufall will continue prioritizing their patients.

"If we were to broaden our scope (of vaccine eligibility), it would have to be with some kind of state or federal funding," Turbiner said. "We’re a doctor’s office."

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This article originally appeared on the Morristown Patch