Petco Park vaccine superstation to close Friday and Saturday due to supply shortage

The COVID-19 vaccine superstation near Petco Park will close Friday and Saturday due to appalling winter storms that swept through much of the United States and frozen vaccine supply lines.

The site could remain closed Sunday and Monday, depending on the arrival of the next shipment of doses. Anyone with an appointment during the shutdown will be rescheduled through UC San Diego’s MyChart system and should seek an email notification, according to county and UCSD spokespersons.

Other vaccination sites in San Diego County are also affected. A site managed by Palomar Health in downtown Escondido closes on Friday but resumes operations on Saturday. And a superstation led by CSU San Marcos and the county will, for now, only offer second doses of the vaccine. The same goes for more than a dozen smaller vaccination sites across the region. Appointments for the first dose will be automatically rescheduled through MyTurn, the state’s online vaccine registration and scheduling system.

Sharp HealthCare, which operates mass vaccination stations in Chula Vista and La Mesa, continues to offer Pfizer first and second dose vaccines from its existing supply and will postpone Moderna vaccination appointments.

Scripps Health, which operates a superstation at Del Mar Fairgrounds, has enough shots to meet appointments throughout the weekend, according to a spokesperson. And UCSD will continue to operate an on-campus site at RIMAC Arena to immunize UCSD Health staff, faculty and patients.

Of all the things that could slow the vaccine rollout in San Diego County, the weather may seem the least likely culprit. Temperatures soared in the 1960s at San Diego International Airport on Thursday afternoon, just a few miles from the Petco Park superstation.

But about 70% of the United States has been covered in snow, according to the National Operational Hydrologic Remote Sensing Center. This includes Michigan and Massachusetts, where Moderna and Pfizer manufacture a large part of their vaccine supply, respectively.

This will be the second time the downtown superstation has shut down, as the site shut down from last Sunday to Tuesday after a vaccine batch from Moderna did not arrive on time. County officials say they still don’t know the reason for last week’s shipping delay.

“A second round of delays is going to have very big impacts on our system,” County Supervisor Nathan Fletcher said during Wednesday’s coronavirus briefing. “I think people understand that we don’t control the weather and that we don’t control the arrival of vaccines.”

Many San Diegans who will be affected by the delays are those who need second doses, as the vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna require a booster three and four weeks later, respectively, to maximize immunity to the coronavirus. There are about 366,000 San Diegans who received their first dose but still need the second, according to the county’s online Vaccine Dashboard.

It’s unclear how many people have appointments scheduled for the coming days, but a UCSD spokesperson said nearly all of this week’s appointments at Petco Park were for second doses. The superstation typically vaccinates around 5,000 San Diegans per day.

Any delay in the second dose can only fuel frustration and worry. But Dr Mark Sawyer, an infectious disease expert at Rady Children’s Hospital, says there is no real reason to be alarmed.

“While these vaccine supply issues may delay your second dose, it will be OK in the end,” Sawyer said. “As long as you finally get the total number of doses you’re supposed to get, it gives you the same level of protection.”

He knows the subject well. Sawyer was one of the committees that recommended that the Food and Drug Administration authorize Moderna and Pfizer vaccines. He is also on a vaccine advisory committee for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Sawyer’s comments echo advice from the CDC, which advises receiving your second dose of COVID-19 vaccine within six weeks of the first – although the agency adds that there is no need to start the process again if your second injection comes later.

There are many other vaccines that require more than one dose, including vaccines against tetanus, measles, and pertussis. In these cases, says Sawyer, the exact timing of the follow-up doses is not critical and is, to some extent, arbitrary.

Case in point: Pfizer and Moderna need second shots 21 and 28 days later, respectively. Why not 22 and 29 days later? Because it’s easier to tell people to come back in three or four weeks, and that’s how the clinical trials that tested the vaccines were set up.

However, there are some basic principles that guide the timing of the second doses. It takes about two weeks to mount an initial vaccine response, and you would not want to receive a second vaccine while still responding to the first. Many cells activated by the vaccine eventually die as the immune response subsides. But subsequent doses kick-start that response, producing higher levels of antibodies, which are Y-shaped proteins that coat a virus and can block infection, and T cells, which can kill cells infected with the virus. .

According to Sawyer, the main reason for getting the second dose as soon as possible is that current vaccines are about 95% effective in preventing people who have received both vaccines from getting sick with COVID-19. Many older people could use this protection; people 65 and older are responsible for 80% of deaths from COVID-19, according to the CDC.

“We had better make sure people at high risk are fully vaccinated, because they are (most) likely to get really sick,” he said.

Although the vaccine rollout in the region has still not reached most of the San Diegans, the local parameters of COVID-19 have continued to gradually improve. The county reported 36 deaths from COVID-19 and 810 new infections on Thursday. That’s a slight increase in cases, but the county reported nearly 20,000 test results Thursday, up from nearly 14,000 Wednesday. The latest report notes 95 new hospitalizations related to COVID-19 and 772 hospitalizations in total; Almost a month ago, there were about 1,700 COVID-19 patients in hospitals in the region.