BUFFALO, N.Y. — Initial doses of the Pfizer COVID vaccine are in the process of being sent to hospitals across New York state.
Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz says there was a distribution issue with doses slated for Erie County Medical Center.
This is the second time in two days we're hearing of doses being delivered to other health care systems, rather than the ones they're supposed to go.
On Wednesday, 2 On Your Side told you about this same thing happening at Niagara Falls Memorial. The state says the hospital didn't have the proper freezer on site when doses of the vaccine were ordered.
The president and CEO of Niagara Falls Memorial Medical Center, Joe Ruffolo, says a portion of its doses were sent to Mount Saint Mary's in Lewiston and Mercy Hospital in South Buffalo, which are both Catholic Health hospitals.
Now that Niagara Falls Memorial has a proper freezer, the state says it's working with Memorial to transfer those vaccines back.
Now there's an issue at ECMC.
"We’ve dealt with some issues. For example, ECMC's doses were not sent to ECMC, they were sent to Millard Fillmore Suburban and Olean General. I have no idea why," Poloncarz said.
Millard Fillmore and Olean General are two Kaleida Hospitals.
2 On Your Side emailed both Kaleida and ECMC to find out what happened. Kaleida wrote us back, saying they don’t know and for us to check with the state.
ECMC just says vaccine doses will be given Friday morning; no additional information was given.
We’re checking with the state on how this happened.
So far, the Governor’s Office says more than 87,000 doses of the Pfizer vaccine have been receive for health care workers and an additional 80,000 will arrive in the next couple of days and these will go to nursing homes.
State officials say they expect to receive 346,000 doses of the Moderna vaccine early next week, pending FDA approval of Moderna’s vaccine.
But we still don’t have a breakdown on how many doses will come to Western New York.
"The Moderna product doesn’t have the challenges from a storage that the Pfizer product does, so I think there will be regions of the state that haven’t had the Pfizer vaccine available because of the storage requirements so you may see the Moderna vaccine get shipped there," said Steve Moore, the chair of the state Pharmacists Society.
On nursing homes, the state has opted into the federal nursing home vaccination program which means that employees from CVS and Walgreens will start vaccinating nursing home residents and staff early next week.
There have also been national reports of additional doses of the Pfizer vaccine found in shipments from Pfizer, but we have not heard of any of this popping up at area hospitals.