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Santa Clara County has stopped scheduling appointments for the first-dose coronavirus vaccine, citing a low and unpredictable supply of doses from the state as the reason.
The news comes as a number of Bay Area officials, including in Santa Clara County, push back on how the state has handled vaccine distribution – from an equity agenda, according to them, disadvantage the needy areas of the region to the solicitation of the giant insurer Blue Shield to help. the state immunization program.
“Due to the state’s low vaccine supply and the need to keep inventory for appointments for the second dose, the county health system stopped scheduling appointments for the first dose on Friday March 5, with the exception of a limited number of walk-in appointments at community locations. The county said in a statement. “The county will resume scheduling appointments for the first dose immediately when the vaccine supply received from the state permits.”
On Wednesday, the county said it had informed “several thousand” of Kaiser’s patients who had made appointments through the county from March 11 to 21 that they were being transferred to Kaiser due to supply issues.
County is moving patient appointments from Kaiser to Kaiser because the state has assured Kaiser that it will have enough vaccines for its members and vaccination sites, while the county has not received any commitments. like this for the uninsured and vulnerable populations we serve, ”Santa Clara County said.
The patients are all under 75, the county said, adding that Kaiser had told the county he would prioritize appointments for those transferred patients.
Kaiser said in a statement that while “vaccine supply continues to be limited and at times unpredictable for all vendors, including Kaiser Permanente, we are pleased to be able to provide vaccines to Kaiser Permanente members whose appointments are you have just been canceled by Santa Clara County due to the county’s lack of vaccine.
“Over the next few days, we will be contacting these members directly to reschedule their appointments as soon as possible,” Kaiser said. “We will also continue to immunize community members as the vaccine supply allows, regardless of their health plan, through our Kaiser Permanente medical centers and the many immunization sites we support with public and private health organizations. We do not anticipate that this situation will affect the vaccination appointments already scheduled at our facilities. “
County manager Jeff Smith expressed frustration with the state on Wednesday, saying, “We don’t know where allocation decisions are made. We asked and it appears that (the California Department of Public Health) is no longer involved in allocation decisions – and allocation decisions are made by Government Operations and Blue Shield, so we don’t know how to how much the Blue Shield accord influenced him, if at all.
In a statement, the state’s public health department said, “The vaccine supply is limited by overall manufacturing. The federal government has said it expects a significant increase in supplies in April and May. We are working with Blue Shield to create an immunization network that will be able to deliver 4 million doses per week by the end of April. “
Vaccine supply has been tightened statewide, in part due to a shortage of vaccines expected from Johnson & Johnson. Gov. Gavin Newsom said on Wednesday that the state did not expect to receive more doses of the vaccine in the immediate future, but hoped the overall vaccine supply “would really start to move next month and the month after.” .
The problems could be compounded on Monday, when the state said vaccine eligibility would extend to Californians with certain disabilities and conditions.
“At this point, we expect the allocation to be less than what we need, so we’ll have to re-evaluate after finding out our new allocation,” Smith said. “Due to dose limits, inventory limits, should I say, we have to limit the number of appointments in order to match the inventory we have, and we have requirements for second doses that we don’t. really can’t jump, so what would that do? means that if we were to receive fewer vaccines, we would have to restrict appointments further.
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