[ad_1]
Governments and health care providers in the Bay Area are opening new sites to administer vaccines and increase the number of vaccines given per day, as California tries to catch up with much of the rest of the country by distributing doses amid the worst outbreak of the pandemic.
Local officials said on Friday that the vaccine rollout was limited by a limited supply and a deluge of demand from residents over 65 deemed eligible by the state to be vaccinated this week, with some counties also citing the need staff, facilities and time to scale up operations. California, which has administered 1.2 million of the roughly 3 million vaccines it has received to date, has experienced one of the slowest deployments of any state.
“We need to increase the pace, distribution and administration of these vaccines,” Governor Gavin Newsom said on Friday as a mass vaccination site opened at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles. “The reality is we have to take these vaccines out of the freezer and put them in people’s arms.”
The need for vaccination became urgent on Friday as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned that a highly transmissible variant of the virus that is spreading rapidly across the UK could account for half of the cases in the US by March. Mutations do not make the virus more deadly, according to the report, but because the rate of transmission is higher, it will lead to more cases and deaths overall compared to the current variant.
The news came as the worldwide death toll from the pandemic surpassed 2 million on Friday. Across California, the percentage of tests that come back positive has declined, Newsom said, as have new cases and hospitalizations. In the Bay Area, a peak of deaths in the post-vacation wave appears to have passed its peak, although intensive care capacity remains low.
As local and state governments struggle to cope with the outbreak and vaccinate vulnerable people, President-elect Joe Biden announced on Friday that he would use the Defense Production Act to help meet his goal of vaccinating 100 million Americans in its first 100 days.
Santa Clara County Legal Counsel James Williams said on Friday recent political chaos with the outgoing administration made the already frustrating vaccine rollout even worse. The Washington Post reported on Friday that a federal stockpile of promised vaccines was in fact empty. Newsom said he did not anticipate the problem would interfere with Californians’ ability to get their second dose on a two-dose regimen, but said it was based on assurances from the federal government, and “We are now aware of the importance of verifying this information. “
Carrie Owen Plietz, president of Kaiser Permanente’s Northern California region, said at a press conference with San Francisco officials on Friday that as soon as more vaccines arrived, the health care system tried to allow people to access it.
“As soon as we receive vaccines, we are actively working to bring them into the arms of individuals,” she said.
San Francisco plans to open three mass vaccination sites with the aim of administering at least 10,000 or more doses of vaccine per day, the Mayor of London, Director of Breed and Health, Dr Grant Colfax announced on Friday. , but first the city needs sufficient supplies.
“The vaccine doses remain limited. We’re ready for more doses, we need more doses, we’re asking for more doses, ”Breed said. “We are not sitting on any vaccine. They all move out the door.
In Alameda County, officials could convert the Oakland Coliseum into a mass coronavirus vaccination site as early as February. The Colosseum was previously used as a coronavirus testing center, polling place and influenza vaccine distribution point.
In Contra Costa County, private and public health systems have so far distributed around 36,000 out of nearly 72,000 doses, with an additional 33,000 doses along the way, officials said at a conference. press Friday. Dr Ori Tzvieli, county operations chief for the COVID-19 response, said scaling up vaccination operations is much more complex than testing.
The county has opened 20 vaccination sites and plans to add more in Antioch and Richmond next week.
“We are at the start of the largest public health vaccination campaign in history,” county supervisor Diane Burgis said Friday at a vaccination site in Pleasant Hill. “We ask everyone to be patient. Your turn will come and when it is your turn, we urge you to get vaccinated.
The county is partnering with paramedics to potentially administer vaccines and is considering opening a mass vaccination site, but does not yet have enough doses to do so, Tzvieli said.
The limited supply is not enough to meet current demand since California opened its process to residents over 65 to get vaccinated on Wednesday. The great interest in booking an appointment on Thursday caused the Sutter Health website to crash and left some people on hold for hours with Kaiser Permanente. The Contra Costa County Health Services website receives around 1,000 appointment requests per hour, Health Director Anna Roth said.
On Thursday, Kaiser received four times the normal call volume in a single call center, Kaiser’s Plietz said on Friday. On Friday, the system was still reporting “extremely high” call volume and wait times, a spokesperson said. By the end of next week, Kaiser expects to have online self-service tools that will allow eligible people to make an appointment if the vaccine supply is available.
A spokeswoman for Sutter said on Friday the website was back, but wait times would still be long. The health system prioritizes vaccines for health workers and people over 75 years of age.
Contra Costa County Health Services are also prioritizing people over 75, while accepting information and scheduling subsequent appointments for people over 65, Tzvieli said. The county hopes to vaccinate everyone in the eligible age group before the end of February.
In Marin County, more than a third of the population is in the current level of vaccine eligibility, including those over 65. County public health chief Dr Matt Willis said demand will exceed supply for a few weeks and urged the healthier elderly to be patient.
In Sonoma County, Dr Sundari Mase, the county’s acting health official, said in a press briefing on Friday that “the deployment will depend on the vaccine supply.” She expects teachers to be vaccinated in the first week of February and said the county is working with its human resources department, police and emergency services to vaccinate other essential workers on time.
“If we have the vaccine supply continuing, I don’t think that will exclude anyone from the current plan,” she said.
Local hospitals were treating 2,106 coronavirus patients on Thursday, the lowest number in 10 days. That’s a bright spot, but Bay Area officials said they are still very concerned about the current availability of intensive care. The death toll on Friday was the highest since the start of the pandemic – with 688 deaths attributed to the coronavirus in the early evening – and the availability of intensive care in the Bay Area, which includes all nine counties as well as counties of Santa Cruz and Monterey, remained extremely low, at 3.4%.
“Now is not the time to let our guard down,” Santa Clara County Supervisor Otto Lee said during a press briefing Friday. “All it takes is one time, a family eating a nice dinner with their masks down, to spread it.” Please squat a little more, a few more months. “
Columnists Trisha Thadani, Erin Allday, Catherine Ho, Aidin Vaziri and the Associated Press contributed reporting.
Mallory Moench is a writer for the San Francisco Chronicle. Email: [email protected] Twitter: @mallorymoench
[ad_2]
Source link