♪ (This Week in South Carolina opening music) ♪ Welcome to This Week in South Carolina.

I'm Gavin Jackson.

This week we talked with Superintendent of Education Molly Spearman about teachers, vaccines and getting more students in school.

I also talked with Dr. Rick Scott of Prisma Health about the latest vaccination effort under way in the state.

Now for the latest from this week.

This week we saw action continue in federal court, where on Wednesday former SCANA CEO Kevin Marsh pled guilty for his role in the $10 billion dollar VC Summer nuclear debacle as part of his plea deal will spend two years in prison be fined $5 million dollars and cooperate with investigators.

The guilty plea bookends South Carolina U.S. attorney Peter McCoy's involvement in the debacle, which he investigated while in the State House and prosecuted as U.S. attorney.

McCoy, a Trump appointee will resign next week.

DHEC chief Dr Edward Simmer said this week that lives were saved by not putting teachers ahead of elderly South Carolinians in vaccine phase 1-A, effectively ending the legislative push by lawmakers to get some 70 thousand educators and staff moved Up.

The Senate sent a contentious $550 million dollar Port of Charleston infrastructure bond bill to the House this week.

And the House approved a bill limiting the governor's emergency powers.

Joining me now to discuss teachers the vaccine and getting more face to face instruction going on back in the school room is State Superintendent of Education, Molly Spearman.

Superintendent, welcome back.

<Supt.

Spearman> Thank you, Gavin.

Great to be with you.

<Gavin> So, let's start talking about try to get more teachers in the school room going back in face to face, five days a week.

You moved since the beginning of the school year till now asking the school district to go back more face to face.

What led to this shift and what you're seeing right now in the school districts.

>> Well when we wrote our Accelerate Ed plan back in the summer, we really did it fairly blindly not knowing what was going to happen.

We used the advice of the CDC and DHEC on masks, on social distancing, disinfectants, all of those things and the truth is it worked.

It worked better than we ever dreamed.

And the research now, we've been in school long enough that research has been done to validate that school is a safe environment and that we can be in operation even when the spread in the community is high.

It sometimes causes some quarantines, but very little transmission, hardly any at all from student to student or student to teacher.

A little bit adult to adult if the mitigation tools aren't used.

So we proved it's safe and so I feel very comfortable insisting that districts open back up and offer face to face full five days a week for everyone.

<Gavin> Even without teachers being able to get the vaccine at this point?

>> Yes.

Of course I'm pushing for teachers to get the vaccine.

I've been very involved with that over the last few weeks, but again the research - if we look at the data it says you do not have to be vaccinated in order to re-open schools.

However, having teachers vaccinated would help us in continuing operations.

We've got two districts that I know of right now Allendale, Edgefield both were back in school face to face, but they've had an outbreak among the adults.

By the way, it was done because a few were not following the mitigation strategies, but they've had close down and go virtual for a couple weeks.

So, getting the vaccine would stop most of that.

And that's the reason, I'm pushing so much for the vaccine for educators.

>> When we look across the state can you break down where schools are right now?

How many schools are face to face?

How many are hybrid and how many virtual?

>> Sure.

We have 12 hundred and 67 schools.

Five of those are virtual all the time.

I'm not going to include them in the numbers.

Close to 700 of our schools are back 5 days a week, full face to face.

Another, right at 550 or so are in a hybrid mode two to four days a week.

And then as of this week, there were 21 schools that were virtual, all virtual and those are the ones who need to get back, if possible.

I do defend and will support any school district that makes the decision because of staffing that they have to go virtual.

I understand that and realize that could be a part of all this, but I have asked all superintendents to please offer a face to face 5 day a week option for all of their families.

>> Those numbers have ticked up since your press conference with the governor, earlier this month?

Right?

>> Yes, I think everyone's working very hard in fact, I know that just in the next week or two York County Aiken County, two of our large districts will be going back 5 days a week.

So those numbers will drop.

When you look at it overall Gavin, about 97, 98 percent of our teachers are back doing some type of face to face.

There's a small group that has been very vocal, but again the majority, they're back.

When I speak with teachers they are very happy to be back.

They're sad when they have to go virtual.

They feel safe in the environment and I've told him to report to us in the department if their issues with any type of protocols that we need to know about that I should get involved in.

>> Even when students are back I heard from one down in Charleston, a high school senior who mentioned that yes they're back in school multiple days a week, when they get to class, they're sitting down at their desk and they're logging on to their computer to watch a virtual class.

It seems it's a little bit of a mix.

I guess being back is somewhat of a benefit >> I may need to check into that.

I've not heard that complaint.

Certainly, our belief is if you're back your teachers are back there with you instructing.

Now, there are many students who take virtual classes we offer Virtual SC through the Department of Education.

So, that could be the situation there where a student might be taking a class that's offered in a franchise.

They couldn't find a teacher.

The Department of Education offers that or either they want to take an Advanced Placement course, virtually that's not offered.

So, yes there are students back at school who still do virtual.

Overall, the instruction should be going on face to face.

And then keeping with the teachers and the vaccine, we did see a big push that started in the Senate earlier this month, trying to get teachers, at first to jump the line of folks in phase 1-A.

That got changed a little bit, then it moved over to the House.

which has still been discussing this in sub-committee.

You were before the subcommittee the other today.

I want your thoughts about where teachers should be and how it can be done effectively at this point.

Should they be in 1-A or should they be prioritized in 1-B?

Your thoughts on this?

>> I stand by my request.

I wrote Governor McMaster and Director of DHEC asking that we be moved to 1-A.

So, I stand by that.

It does not look like that's going to happen.

So, the next step then is for us to be ready.

We have been diligently working over the last two weeks.

I can tell you that every district in the state now has a vaccine plan.

They've been matched up with a provider and they have a detailed plan as to how it will operate once we get the vaccine.

So, it sounds as though 1-A, the 65 year olds that hopefully in the next mid March late March, for sure, will be completed and 1-B will open up.

I can tell you that schools are going to be ready to go and I hope we'll be the first in line there.

There about 5 or 6 hundred thousand people in that 1-B group, so that makes us want to be ready.

And the schools are ready right now.

If we were to get the go ahead today, we'd be ready to go and we'll continue to maintain that readiness.

>>...about that, Superintendent, when we look at getting the green light, what does that look like?

I know you've talked about different district plans.

Does that mean some vaccine gets diverted to certain districts and then they're administered by nurses there or do teachers have to go to a local provider?

How does that work?

<Supt.

Spearman> A mixture.

Depending on the size of the district and how the provider and they worked it out.

Ideally, I think it is helpful if the provider can come on-site in the district.

You have to realize, we have districts with over 5,000 employees and we have districts with a hundred employees.

So, it's a different plan.

School nurses are being used in many of the operations.

They have to take some training for that.

That's going on now so that if they're going to be used.

In some of the plans, the providers are asking that the teachers drive to their mass vaccination site, which is already up and running.

So it does depend on the area and the capacity of the provider and what they have in place.

>> And have you spoken with the governor recently about where teachers might be falling?

Is there any inclination that he might still put them at the end of phase 1-A or do you think he'll prioritize them in 1-B, which according to DHEC Director, Dr Edward Simmer sounds like it's about two to three weeks away when we start looking into getting appointments for phase 1-B, which would doesn't really help this effort to get teachers in the classroom before the end of the school year.

>> I think the governor has been pretty firm in his stance on that 65 year olds will be completed and once that is done, teachers will be ready to go after that.

>> Yeah and so again, probably not in time for the end of the school year, just - <Supt.

Spearman> We hope.

I think once we get the go ahead, we can do this pretty quickly.

Obviously, the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines take two doses.

If the third Johnson and Johnson vaccine becomes available that might make things move a little more quickly, because it's only one dose.

So, a lot of that remains to be seen.

That's out of my control.

I'm just going to have our folks ready to go.

We'll take whichever vaccine they send us.

<Gavin> Then, Superintendent switching gears, the big push for this is because face to face instruction is the best instruction available, especially for students to retain information.

You've done some recent assessments throughout this current school year.

Can you tell us what you're seeing when it comes to how students retain information and this learning loss situation you guys are confronting?

<Supt.

Spearman> Sure, in South Carolina we are very fortunate that when we did the budget back in the continuing resolution on the budget, additional language was added to require all school districts in the state to give up interim assessments, one when children returned in August and then again in December, which was a new time that they didn't normally do these - we call them formative or interim assessments.

They'll be doing another one in Spring as well.

The data had to be sent to the department, which is a new rule.

The District pays for this, so we don't normally get this data.

But we have it.

We crunched the data.

It showed that there was significant loss, particularly in math in fourth and fifth graders.

A loss across the board, but in those areas, those were the highest levels.

We have been watching and tracking the growth of those students with the December assessment.

Some grade levels, kindergarten and 5th graders and 9th graders seem to have caught up.

They are aware they should have been post COVID.

Other areas, there is growth that needs to be going on.

The data that we have is readily available to teachers, in fact they get it that day or the next day.

They have already hired, retired teachers folks to work as interventionists with the students and some really strong work is going on.

They're using their federal CARES Act, those additional funds that they've gotten through Congress to do that work and it will remain.

Right now, the districts are writing their plans because they've got additional funding that the expectation is to use that funding for learning loss.

So, we are receiving the plans right now from districts as to how they're going to manage that extra instruction.

Whether it's during the day, after school and we are approving those plans now.

<Gavin> Are you concerned at this point about where we are with learning loss or do you feel confident with plans going on that we can make up.

>> Yeah I'm concerned, but I'm optimistic as well that the instruction is going very well.

The real fact and it shines so openly here, is that students need to be with a teacher.

They need to be at school and unfortunately some of our poorest students, some of our students living in poverty are the very ones who are at home virtually and that's why it's so important to get them back at school, but I have great confidence and we're doing everything we can to supply additional resources, additional math resources, additional reading resources for elementary through high school students so not all the work has to be done in school, but they can manage some remediation if they're at home virtually.

>> Then Superintendent, one final question with a minute left.

I want to talk about that additional funding you just mentioned.

We're looking at about $846 million dollars going to districts from that last COVID relief?

<Supt.

Spearman> That's exactly right.

It's about the same amount that we would get normally for a normal federal budget.

So, extraordinary support.

Now that money is spent over three years, it's not just for one year.

So, I do believe right now districts have ample funding to support what they need to do.

>> It can be pretty broad from what I was reading.

It can be anything from providing principals and school leaders with the resources necessary to address the needs of their individual schools to infrastructure upgrades.

So, are you keeping check on what <Gavin> th ey're spending that money on?

>> Yes.

There's very strong monitoring going on that's why we're looking at plans and auditing that will be done throughout the process.

So that is our responsibility at the Department of Education to oversee that.

We've hired additional folks to be on board watching that.

So, yes there's very close monitoring of that funding.

That's all our time.

Thanks for joining us, State superintendent of Education Molly Spearman Thank you.

>> Thank you.

To discuss the latest on vaccination efforts I'm joined by Dr. Rick Scott.

He's Prisma Health Co-chair of the Health Vaccination Midlands task force.

Dr Scott, thanks for joining us.

<Dr.

Scott> My pleasure.

Great to be here.

Thank you so much.

Dr. Scott tells how things are going with Prisma Health in the system.

You have been administering the most doses of anyone in the state, of providers in the state.

You're about 210 thousand doses in at this point.

Tell us how that's going and what it's looking like right now.

>> I think we took off like a greyhound and like many of the health systems and others were pleased to get early allocations of the vaccine, which allowed us to come out of the gates at high speed.

I think we at one point, were vaccinating close to 10 thousand people a day, and then I think we got a little ahead of the supply chain, which to be fair to everyone, nobody has a great predictability around to give you some context I think three weeks ago, we administered 38 thousand doses.

That means we need to have 38 thousand doses this week so we can hit that three week window and luckily the CDC's extended that window a little bit further because right now this week we have somewhere between 12 and 16 thousand doses in our possession to meet that, so some of those folks will probably not be exactly on day 21 but well within the safe range and as data keeps coming out, we're seeing that the vaccine is actually quite effective even with a single dose.

So, we feel confident that the people have the protection, but we're suffering through the supply chain vagaries which include two or three major named winter storms that no one predicted along with some variation in how it rolls out of that manufacturing plant.

We only have the Pfizer vaccine so it does limit us a little bit.

>> I think that's important to reiterate what you're talking about in terms of if you don't get the second dose immediately when your schedule to get it, it's still effective and you can still get it several weeks thereafter as well.

>> Yeah absolutely they're saying now up to 6 weeks is certainly within reason.

Though we like to get people as close to the 21 day mark as we possibly can.

People that due to weather or other changes miss their appointment, we tell them if you're past day 25 and we gave you that first dose just come back and we'll take care of you and honor your appointment.

>> We're about almost three months into this vaccination rollout.

Prisma has ramped up several mass vaccination sites.

Tell us about the journey to get to this point, maybe some of the challenges you faced and overcome and where you see going forward.

>> Sure well we started out with our hospital sites and focused on the 1-A group as well as the members in our community the first responders and others that fell into that category.

We quickly ramped up into two larger mass vaccination centers.

One in a K-mart adjacent to Greenville Memorial Hospital and a second one down here in the Midlands which is at Gamecock Park, a tremendous partnership with USC to allow us to use their space and facility.

There are of course some issues surrounding an outdoor site in winter time.

But our team is out there regardless of temperature and if it's safe.

They're even often there in the rain.

We've started to focus our efforts now down to six sites as we get a better capability in the larger ones but we're continuing to explore other options and partners including the possibility of partnering with Walmart or others going forward.

So we're hopeful to get even bigger space because we know this is not a sprint.

It's really a long haul.

That said, we are anxious to see others join the battle with us because we can only do so much as a hospital and health system, but we expect very shortly to see some of these other vaccines roll out into some of the commercial spaces and right into doctor offices.

The Johnson and Johnson vaccine will be a game changer as will some expected changes around the storage of the Pfizer vaccine.

>> Doctor, kind of following up, how many doses could y'all give if you had maybe as much vaccine coming as possible?

Have you guys looked into how much, what capacity you could expand to?

>> Yeah, we looked at our own internal numbers and thought that we could probably get up to 10 to 15 thousand doses literally a day.

Unfortunately, we can't staff to that if the supply isn't there either, and honestly we won't be the only ones in the battle going forward as it becomes more available.

I would envision this becomes more like the seasonal flu shot that you can get in your own physician's office as soon as we have a cold stable vaccine that will live four weeks in a refrigerator just like the flu shot does.

>> Tell me about Prisma's outreach to under served and vulnerable communities specifically rural areas.

We talked about these mask vaccination sites in Greenville and here in Richland County but what are y'all doing to reach those under served populations?

>> Well, we have some in our more rural sites too.

Both upstate and down here in Sumter at our Tuomey site.

We're about to expand there, we hope into the Civic Center in town from the hospital location.

That'll allow us to do probably upwards of 500 doses a day.

We've also just started last weekend, a pilot with some mobile units that will allow us to get out into these under served areas proactively and we're relying on the locals in that area to reach out to us through their church, to their local political leaders to let us know that they're there and need help.

We do think that the drive through at Gamecock park has been a game changer for many because it allows people who can only literally get from door to car to be vaccinated.

Even at the mass sites, there's often a good walk from the parking lot all the way in.

So, we're trying to cover it from multiple directions including outreach with what will be I believe by the middle of May, 6 mobile vans.

We have two now.

One upstate and one in the Midlands that deployed for the first time last week.

We're working through the best way to use those.

<Gavin> That's an important demographic to reach out to when talking about rural and under served areas.

I want to talk about some of the key indicators we're seeing in the state declining, some good news.

Our cases per one hundred thousand, our positivity rates, hospitalizations, that's ICUs and ventilator use, and our deaths are also going down.

What's it been like at PRISMA facilities?

What are y'all seeing?

I'm guessing this is being reflected in your admissions in your current population and what you're seeing, maybe what you can correlate this to?

Is this because of the vaccine being rolled out and being implemented at this point?

>> Well, I wish I could take credit for that with the vaccine as a medical person, but I think some of that is true and some of it may be just serendipity having to do with changes in the weather and the fact there are probably many more people that have had a sub-acute case of COVID than we really are aware of and so the vaccine combined with many thousands more having already had the disease is probably helping limit some of those super spreader events.

We saw our numbers go through the roof this winter, first with Thanksgiving, then Christmas and New Year's right after and boy that first few weeks of January strained every health system to it's absolute limit.

That said, we have started to see the numbers come down.

The numbers that we have on ventilators are now the lowest they've been since Thanksgiving.

That said the numbers seem pretty scary on the way up, that now coming down have become almost the new normal.

I wouldn't want anybody in South Carolina to drop their guard though because when I look at the national numbers I can still only find Iowa in a worse place than we are and we're very close behind New York and New Jersey and some other states that are still challenged.

So, I think we're in the right direction but it's not time to put out the mission accomplished banner yet.

We are hopeful that the numbers will continue to trend down.

<Gavin> Yeah, unfortunately some negative indicators and a number of our tests have also been going down.

So, people need to still continue being tested throughout a good bit.

I want to ask about the Johnson and Johnson vaccine which we expect to come online if approved later I guess in March, how do you see that maybe fitting into the vaccine rollout?

Is that going to be more like the Moderna vaccine where it goes to the pharmacies and the small clinics?

<Dr.

Scott> I would expect it because the storage requirements around that vaccine are significantly more liberal, that will be a vaccine more widely available in commercial space and in physicians offices, ideally.

When I read the data that's being up presented to the FDA, it's actually very encouraging.

people focused on 66 or 70 percent rate of protection, but you read a little bit further into the data and find that nobody required an intensive care unit and there were no fatalities literally in giving out 40 thousand plus doses, including some of the testing done in South Africa.

So, very promising that it's going to be a vaccine of wide utility and if you think about it, only having to give one dose would have meant that we had many more people actually protected then we can with Pfizer and Moderna.

>> A lot of encouraging news.

Dr. Scott one quick final question, we did surpass a very grim milestone as a country this week with 500 thousand Americans dead.

More than 7,400 of those were South Carolinians.

Quickly, tell me did you think we would reach this point in this pandemic?

What keeps you optimistic?

>> Well I tell you I did not.

I feel like I've lived this twice at this time last Spring I was headed back to New Jersey to help them open their COVID relief hospital in Atlantic City as the chief medical officer.

At that time, we were looking at dire predictions up to a 120 thousand fatalities.

The fact is we all knew there was going to be a second spike.

We didn't know that it would be twice the size of the first one and so what really does give me optimism though is we will have a three great tools at our disposal and we've also got the monoclonal antibody and antibody cocktails available to us now.

We opened a clinic here at Prisma for that in the midlands and have given upwards of fifteen hundred doses so far across the entire state and if we can continue to identify at risk, vulnerable people in the correct age group and get that to them, we may be able to keep them from ever ending up in an ICU.

Yeah let's keep that encouraging news on our minds going forward.

Dr. Rick Scott is the Co-chair of the Prisma Health Vaccination Midlands Task Force.

>> Thank you for joining us and for your work.

>> Thank you so much for having me.

I appreciate it.

I look forward to summer.

>> To stay up to date with the latest news throughout the week, check out the South Carolina Lede.

It's a podcast that I host on Tuesdays and Saturdays.

You can find it on SouthCarolinaPublicRadio.org or wherever you find podcasts.

For South Carolina ETV, I'm Gavin Jackson Be well, South Carolina.

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