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SACRAMENTO – As California enters the home stretch of its 10-day sprint to inoculate a million more people with COVID-19, the state falls far short of its target – another potential blow to vaccine deployment against the coronavirus by Governor Gavin Newsom.
To meet the one million vaccine target Newsom has touted, health officials are expected to receive around 500,000 more injections into people’s arms by the end of Friday, quadrupling their pace in recent days. California had already administered nearly half a million doses in total when the governor set his goal last week, and the total on Wednesday stood at 971,829, according to the State Department of Public Health.
Sahar Robertson, a spokesperson for Newsom, said data up to Thursday was not yet available because it takes time for vaccine suppliers to report the number of doses they have administered. She said the state will have a full picture of its progress to reach the benchmark next week.
“By releasing this goal, we have undoubtedly seen an acceleration in the pace of vaccinations, and we look forward to continuing to partner with local counties and the health system to achieve our goal,” Robertson said in a statement. .
Distribution of the vaccine has exceeded expectations nationwide, but the California rollout has been criticized as being particularly slow and confusing. The state reports that local health departments and hospital systems have only used about a third of the doses they received, among the worst rates in the country, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Since last week, Newsom has repeatedly pledged that the state will vaccinate an additional 1 million people by Friday. He suggested the target was meant to increase the urgency of vaccinating Californians.
“The reason we set a target of 1 million is that we are sending an urgent call across the spectrum,” Newsom said at a press conference on Monday. He said California needed “a practical approach to accelerate the equitable and safe distribution of vaccines.”
But the governor’s penchant for embracing bold goals, like a sudden surge of one million vaccinations, could backfire if the state fails.
Rob Stutzman, a Republican political consultant, said confidence in Newsom’s response to the pandemic had already been eroded by public outrage at a dinner he attended in November at the French Laundry in Yountville and by a ongoing scandal involving major unemployment fraud. Now he could also build a reputation for being unable to deliver the vaccine, turning his credibility into political responsibility.
“He seems to have a penchant for bars that he can’t get over,” Stutzman said. “People would forgive if it felt like the best effort was being made. But if you make a promise and can’t keep it, you’re setting yourself up for failure.
The 10-day clock began ticking on Jan. 6, when California administered about 480,000 doses, according to the Department of Public Health. That means the state aims to have nearly 1.5 million people vaccinated by the end of Friday.
But an analysis of state data shows that California has administered an average of just 61,500 doses of the vaccine in the past eight days, just over half of what it would have needed from the start to reach l Newsom’s goal. That number is slowly improving, with the state reporting that 82,787 people were vaccinated on Wednesday.
Dr Yvonne Maldonado, an infectious disease expert who participated in the vaccine deployment at Stanford University, said California and other states face the challenge because investments have been skewed toward vaccine development instead. than to the public health infrastructure needed to get it to people.
“You can do all the high-level planning,” she says. “From the start, we never received any money from the federal level for that last mile.”
Attention has also recently turned to California’s complex, multi-tiered system for prioritizing those vaccinated, starting with health workers and residents of long-term care facilities. The state relaxed those rules this week, opening eligibility to anyone 65 or older, as it looks for ways to speed up vaccinations.
Dr George Rutherford, infectious disease expert at UCSF, said state officials were right to pay close attention to ethical questions about who should be vaccinated first, but plans were halted by the complex logistics of distribution.
“It’s probably an example of the perfect being the enemy of the good,” he said.
Rutherford added that he was in favor of moving to a system of mass vaccination sites, to simplify the process of reaching large numbers of patients at once: “Let’s just get people through.”
Alexei Koseff is a writer for the San Francisco Chronicle. Email: [email protected] Twitter: @akoseff
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