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San Francisco healthcare providers may soon begin administering Covid-19 vaccines to grocery store workers, teachers and residents over 75, health officials say at a press conference Tuesday.
“Most of the front-line acute care staff at Zuckerberg General Hospital in San Francisco and Laguna Honda have been vaccinated,” said Dr. Grant Colfax, director of public health for San Francisco. “And after today, more than 90% of the people of Laguna Honda will have received the first dose of the Pfizer vaccine.”
Colfax has not given any precise date as to the start of the next phase or how it will unfold. He stressed that the vaccines will be distributed by health care providers such as Kaiser, UCSF and Sutter Health. And in response to a reporter’s question, he said the city would “explore” whether large vaccination sites would be faster than what is currently in place with different providers.
The city will also receive vaccines to administer to people in its care or who do not have insurance. He did not specify how the city’s vaccines would be distributed, but said they were now working with Walgreens to vaccinate residents of Laguna Honda.
Colfax said the Department of Public Health had received 30,000 doses, which it was distributing throughout the city. After this shipment, the state began sending doses directly to health care providers. He didn’t have those numbers.
Colfax also couldn’t say how many of the city’s 80,000 frontline health workers – the highest-priority group in the state’s multi-level distribution plan – had been vaccinated because they had been vaccinated by their families. own employers. The city only vaccinated employees of its hospital, Zuckerberg San Francisco General, as well as the 700 or so residents of Laguna Honda.
UCSF currently vaccinates up to 1,100 people per day, according to Dr. Joshua Adler, clinical director of UCSF.
Adler added that he hopes the hospital will be able to increase their vaccination rate and that so far the vaccine supply has been able to keep up with the rate at which they administer the vaccines.
“At this time, we continue to focus our efforts on immunizing healthcare workers primarily, and then hope to move to additional groups in the coming weeks,” Adler said.
Colfax also said the next vaccine candidates will be determined by the state.
“We are waiting for the state to finalize the next phase that is proposed to include essential frontline workers such as public safety, grocery store workers, teachers and people over 75,” Colfax said. .
According to a report by New York Times, California has vaccinated more than 450,000 people, or about 1.2% of the state’s population, more than any other state or territory in terms of vaccine count, but at the bottom of the list by percentage of the total population. The Northern Mariana Islands, having vaccinated 5.7% of their 57,000 inhabitants.
Colfax also shared updates on new case rates and intensive care capacity.
“We are averaging around 237 new cases of Covid-19 every day,” Colfax said, adding that this figure is high, but an improvement from the average 290 new daily cases in mid-December.
In terms of critical care capacity, the Bay Area currently only has 5.9% uptime, which keeps us below the state’s stay-at-home threshold of 15%, according to Colfax. San Francisco is currently doing much better than the region, with a local ICU availability of 35%, but Colfax has also warned that the capacity of intensive care beds in the city may soon decline.
“While we have these intensive care beds now in San Francisco, it is possible with our regional and national increase, that these intensive care capacity numbers will drop sharply,” Colfax said. “Maybe because of a worsening of our local situation, or because of the needs of the region or the state.”
Four people outside of San Francisco are currently being treated in city hospitals due to hospital capacity overruns in neighboring counties, Colfax said, and more could be coming.
“While we have care available and people need care, it is the right moral and ethical thing to do to provide that care when asked for it,” Colfax said.
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