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Santa Clara County is stepping up immunizations in an attempt to finish delivering them to healthcare workers before moving on to the next group.
Deployment so far has been slow in the Bay Area and nationwide, but the next phase is expected to go much faster.
Kevin Dizon is now one of more than 47,000 healthcare workers in Santa Clara County to receive his COVID-19 vaccine appointment card, as well as his first vaccine.
“I actually didn’t think I was going to be able to get it, I thought I would be at a later level and then they added the dental realm,” Dizon said.
The state has extended Phase 1A eligibility to all types of healthcare workers, like Dizon, who is a dental hygienist.
But so far, only about a third of the country’s healthcare workers have been vaccinated.
Vaccinations will not be extended to the next group until that group is finished, which should be in a few weeks.
Bay Area healthcare organizations are already sending messages to members, including a mass email from Sutter Health.
According to the post, Group 1B, which includes patients aged 65 to 74 and teachers, will soon be able to book vaccine appointments online.
Santa Clara County Public Health plans to open a second vaccination center, which could increase capacity to 6,000 injections per day.
In addition to this capacity, there are private groups like Walgreens and CVS.
“We’re talking about more like private hospitals like Palo Alto Medical Foundation, Kaiser, they also administer their vaccines, separately,” said Santa Clara County Supervisor Otto Lee.
But this increased capacity depends on the availability of vaccines.
“Vaccines come in waves,” said Dr. Jennifer Tong of Santa Clara Valley Medical Center. “We’re getting 50 to 100,000 at a time, and one of our key factors in being able to expand the capacity further is whether or not we’ll have enough vaccines.”
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