California pushing for more rapid vaccine distribution
CENTRAL COAST, Calif. (KION) California Governor Gavin Newsom acknowledged the slower than expected pace of getting out vaccines at a news conference Monday. He said the state is working on plans to accelerate the pace for administering vaccines.
Here on the Central Coast, the first vaccines were administered locally about 3 weeks ago under the state's Phase 1A, which gives priority to health care workers. Phase 1A is broken up into three tiers. Health officials said Santa Cruz and Monterey County are almost through Tier 1, which includes heath care staff, long-term care residents and workers, and EMTs and paramedics. Now, they’re moving into Tier 2.
Here’s a look at how Central Coast distribution efforts are going:
-Santa Cruz County: 3,505 doses administered
-SVMH: 1,880 doses administered
-CHOMP: 2,400 employees immunized
But counties are facing pressure to move quicker. Santa Cruz County Health Officer Dr. Gail Newel said the state is pushing them to go faster after the California Department of Public Health called an emergency meeting Sunday night.
“We were instructed that the administration, the governor and his administrative staff, had directed the California Department of Public Health to finish Phase 1A as much as possible in the next 10 days. That’s a Herculean task. We’re going to do our very best,” Newel said.
Newel said an estimated 14,700 people will be offered the vaccine under Phase 1A, but they don’t have that much vaccine at this point.
The county received a total of 7,800 vaccines so far and about 3,500 of those have been administered.
Newel said the CVS and Walgreens partnership vaccinating in nursing homes will help cover some of it, but that still leaves a good portion of people left to vaccine in Phase 1A.
“That leaves us about––with close to 10,000 people still to vaccine, perhaps 8,000, but somewhere in there, and so we’re ramping up to see if we can get that done quickly,” Dr. Newel said.
Dr. Newel said the remaining doses are being stored to make sure there’s enough for the first Phizer recipients.
“We’re kind of hanging onto those to make sure that the second doses are arriving on schedule because it’s almost time for the second dose to happen for the first folks that got vaccinated on December 16,” Newel said.
Newel said everyone has been offered a vaccine at three acute care hospitals. They have also vaccinated paramedics, EMTs and firefighters that go into homes.
Monterey County Health Officer Dr. Edward Moreno said hospital staff have received vaccines. At a Board of Supervisors briefing, he said they are also holding clinics to vaccine EMTs and paramedics and have vaccinated 200 so far.
Monterey County hospitals are focused on vaccinating their staff members first and getting them out to other staff in the health system.
“Right now we’re focused on vaccinating the health system," SVMH Associate Chief Nursing Officer Carla Spencer said. "We do have individuals that are seeing COVID patients in the clinics so we also have to protect them.”
The vaccine rollout comes at a time when the COVID-19 death toll and hospitalizations continue to rise on the Central Coast.
Hospitals continue to get more doses of the vaccine each week.
Most hospitals KION reached out to said they don’t have any extra doses and are not discarding any. The vaccines they received will be good for 2-5 months, if stored properly.
Unlike what we’ve seen on the national level with long lines to get vaccines in some states, no lines reported by hospitals here. They’re scheduling out recipients.
The vaccines are not available to the general public at this time.
Health officials are working with employers and health care providers to notify people who can get vaccinated.
VACCINE DISTRIBUTION TIERS:
