7. Managing vaccine inventory (ongoing)
Due to the nature of the distribution channels and the vaccine itself, there are some special considerations that need to be made when managing the COVID vaccine inventory.
- Reporting vaccine inventory: Providers are required to report vaccine inventory daily through their State IIS (if your state signed up to report to CDC on your behalf) or directly to VaccineFinder on a daily basis. This reporting should be straightforward and should not require any technology integrations.
- Vaccine ordering: Providers will order doses through VTrckS, a CDC tool. This should also be a straightforward report and should not require any technology integrations.
- Tight scheduling: Once a vaccine is thawed, there is risk of spoilage, so it’s important to have tight scheduling operations to mitigate risk.
- Vaccine reserve: Because the vaccine requires two doses 3-4 weeks apart and both doses need to be the same brand, consider reserving half of your inventory for each brand to ensure that supply chain disruptions don’t risk your ability to administer the second dose.