CDC team arrives to investigate Shelby County vaccine mismanagement

Updated: Mar. 2, 2021 at 5:29 PM CST
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SHELBY COUNTY, Tenn. (WMC) - A team of federal investigators from the CDC are now on the ground in Shelby County.

They are assisting state investigators in trying to make sense of the vaccine mismanagement in Shelby County and to make sure vaccines are administered efficiently from now on.

Related | CDC on the way to Shelby County, in contact about wasted and unused doses

After learning of the massive vaccine loss in Shelby County, Tennessee Health Commissioner Dr. Lisa Piercey sent a letter to the CDC on Feb. 20, requesting their help “providing oversight and accountability” on the ground.

“The CDC team arrived Sunday night and came into the Shelby County Health Department alongside us on Monday morning. Our teams continue to work together there,” said Piercey.

Piercey says the CDC team, comprised of three to four people, is working to help state investigators piece together data to ensure that the vaccines that were in the custody of Shelby County were stored at the proper temperature, from the time they arrived to the time they were put into arms.

Piercey says because of a lack of consistent record-keeping at the Shelby County Health Department, much of this information was not preserved.

“We are taking all the data available to us on the digital data loggers, on the temperature logs, the transport logs and putting all of these together to try to ensure vaccine stability, based on the temperatures that we know about,” said Piercey.

She says they are not ready to say how many doses, if any, may have been stored at the wrong temperature.

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