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With three COVID-19 vaccines now showing promising results, California Governor Gavin Newsom told a press conference on Monday that the state was preparing for delivery and distribution, but wide public availability is still in months.
As Newsom has previously said, he noted that state health workers would be the first to receive vaccinations and that could happen before the end of the year.
“Mass vaccination is unlikely to happen anytime soon,” Newsom said. “March, April, June, July, that’s where we start to evolve.”
The Food and Drug Administration is likely to approve one or more vaccines in early December, and Newsom has said the state is ready to act quickly with the wheels already in motion.
California has launched a community advisory committee made up of community groups, school leaders and nonprofits to advise on distribution and attribution. A Phase 1a allocation project, targeting 2.4 million healthcare workers statewide, is expected on December 1.
Next, the committee will look at the allocation of vaccines to people in collective care, medically vulnerable medical first responders and those involved in the security infrastructure.
Earlier this month, drugmakers Pfizer and Moderna reported preliminary results from late stage trials showing their COVID-19 vaccines were nearly 95% effective. AstraZeneca said on Monday that late stage trials have shown its vaccine to be very effective and that, unlike others, this vaccine does not need to be stored at freezing temperatures, making it potentially less expensive. and easier to distribute.
Newsom said the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines will likely be distributed first in “very limited supplies.”
“The first round of vaccinations will be extremely limited,” he said. “We start with a framework of scarcity”.
The State Scientific Safety Review Working Group has already reviewed data from the Phase I and II studies of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines and will be able to review the Phase III data at a time close to when the FDA and CDC will receive information to expedite the review and avoid delay. .
The country’s most populous state, California, has implemented mass vaccinations in the past, administering tens of millions of routine vaccines each year, and will learn from that experience. Last season, 19 million doses of influenza vaccine were administered in three to four months. During the H1N1 pandemic, local health services doubled the doses administered routinely, according to the governor.
“We’re not starting from scratch… we’re building this rich experience,” Newsom said. “We are building existing infrastructure at national and local levels and a history of partnerships that have been organized at all levels.
The Associated Press contributed to this story.
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