‘It was a kick in the gut’: KCHD says 975 COVID-19 vaccines are believed to have been accidentally discarded – WBIR.com

Officials said that no misconduct is suspected and that the company uses tracking software on vaccine shipments.

The Knox County Health Department said Wednesday that 975 doses of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine appeared to be missing, saying it believes the doses were mistakenly thrown away.

Officials said Tennessee leaders confirmed that the doses were shipped to the Knox County Health Department. However, county health leaders said that they had no record of receiving the vaccines.

KCHD Director Dr. Martha Buchanan was tearful when she announced the loss of the doses -- as each one is precious in this stage of the vaccine rollout due to the limited supply and critical protection they will provide to the most at-risk.

"It was a kick in the gut for all us," she said fighting through tears. "We remain very committed to integrity and transparency, which is why we're here today."

The box of vaccine that disappeared was intended to be distributed as second doses for people who already received their first dose. KCHD said it will need to use vaccine doses that were originally set aside as first doses to make up for the loss -- saying they will still honor appointments for people had them this week.

This is something you certainly hope never happens and we are working with the State to determine how it did, Buchanan said. It is an unfortunate situation, but in the meantime, our vaccination efforts continue unabated.

Buchanan said, based on GPS data, it appears the doses were accidentally discarded. She said different types of insulated boxes arrive for the Pfizer vaccine -- one containing vaccine doses preserved with dry ice inside a thermal container, and another that typically arrives a day later containing just dry ice in case the doses aren't put in on-site cold storage and need to be kept in the shipping container for longer. She said the boxes look nearly identical, saying they are "kind of generic."

Buchanan said KCHD orders vaccine every week and it has received doses and dry ice shipments on regular intervals. Two weeks ago, KCHD said it received two shipments -- a group of first-dose vaccine on Thursday, and another shipment on Friday that a team member believed was a dry ice-only shipment.

Based on the timing of the shipment and the similarities in the boxes, Buchanan said the team member discarded the box they thought contained just dry ice. However, once the second-dose vaccine shipment was reported missing, the team member reported what they feared happened.

"That's when the team member said, 'Oh goodness, maybe there was a second-dose shipment that I thought was dry ice," Buchanan explained.

Pfizer uses GPS-enabled thermal sensors to track the location and temperature of each vaccine shipment, so it is unclear how an error like this could occur. No misconduct is suspected, officials said.

"There are still a lot of questions to answer," Buchanan said. "Why didn't the GPS tracker work? Why didn't the temperature tracker work?"

The department held a short-notice press briefing on Wednesday about the discrepancy. They said that 975 doses are equivalent to 1.7% of all vaccines distributed in Knox County.

In the early stages of the COVID-19 vaccine distribution, the county distributed the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine.

The health department also released a new waitlist system Wednesday morning. Eligible people can sign up through the health department's website, by calling 311 or the Health Department at 865-215-5555.

In total, more than 56,000 vaccinations have been administered.

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'It was a kick in the gut': KCHD says 975 COVID-19 vaccines are believed to have been accidentally discarded - WBIR.com