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The growing promise of coronavirus vaccinations in Sonoma County collided with the realities of vaccine shortages and extreme weather elsewhere on Monday, shattering expected dose deliveries.
The supply issues were so severe that one of the county’s largest healthcare providers, Sutter Health, decided to suspend scheduling all appointments for the first doses and planned to reschedule appointments. second dose for some patients.
Friday’s announcement that the county would immediately open vaccinations to residents 65 and older, as well as employees in food production, restaurants and grocery stores – the biggest expansion in vaccine eligibility here, with around 63,000 more eligible – seemed like a watershed moment. .
For Kevin Cronin and his team at Rosso Pizzeria & Wine Bar in Santa Rosa, the wait to get vaccinated against COVID-19 continues.
“Everyone who works for me now, they want to get the shot,” Cronin said Monday. “But it’s very difficult to know how to handle this. Like, I don’t know personally. They say to call your primary care provider. So you call them up and they say, ‘We don’t know.’ ‘
Indeed, the appointments for the shots remain extremely difficult to obtain. And the county’s expanded eligibility comes at a particularly difficult time in the vaccination effort that began in December.
The county closed several vaccination clinics for at least a day on Monday and medical providers rationed doses due to the disruption of nationwide distribution of vaccine shipments caused by last week’s freezing weather and blackouts. power in other parts of the country, including Texas.
“It’s very frustrating,” said Dr Urmila Shende, COVID-19 vaccine director for Sonoma County. “Especially since we have developed all these partnerships with different clinics and we are ready to increase our capacities. But what can you do with Mother Nature? “
The county had one clinic affiliated with Sonoma Valley High School closed on Sunday, and two more at Sonoma Veterans Memorial Hall (both were through Sonoma Valley Health Partners) and Rancho Cotate High School (through the office of the Education Department) closed Monday as its partners awaited a week-long shipment of 5,100 doses of Moderna vaccine.
Those doses have yet to arrive Monday, which has prompted county officials to scramble to scrapped an additional clinic scheduled for Tuesday at the Grace Pavilion at the Santa Rosa Fairgrounds, a clinic run by the County Medical Association. from Sonoma. Another Tuesday clinic, on the Santa Rosa Junior College campus in Petaluma, will operate as planned, but will only administer the 84 doses the Petaluma Health Center already had on hand; he will cancel 252 other meetings.
Sonoma Valley Health Partners had planned to host another clinic in the veterans room on Tuesday, but decided not to make an appointment due to the vaccine shortage.
County health officials said they received kits with syringes, bottles and other immunization supplies on Monday. Shende took this as a good sign, as these shipments usually precede the additional vaccine doses by 24 hours.
Unlike Sutter Health, Providence St. Joseph, operator of Santa Rosa Memorial, Petaluma Valley and Healdsburg hospitals, has enough doses to fill their weekly appointment schedule, the North Pharmacy director said. California, Saad Sultan. Kaiser Permanente also said there was no delay in vaccination appointments.
West County health centers are taking a similar approach to Sutter’s. Chief Executive Jason Cunningham said the nonprofit was running out of three boxes of vaccine doses this week. They administered about 250 first doses per day at their clinics at Analy High School and Guerneville School, and had to add 250 second doses to that this week.
“Instead, we only vaccinate the 250 second doses and we stick to new doses until we are sure of a sufficient supply,” Cunningham said.
Mendocino County health officials said Monday they are also opening up vaccination eligibility to residents aged 65 and over.
The increased demand for vaccines is putting additional pressure on the overwhelmed collection of appointment portals for vaccinations available to residents of Sonoma County. As of Monday, none of the sites linked on SoCoEmergency.org showed vacancies, except for the OptumServe clinic in Rohnert Park. The first available appointment was March 18.
Despite Monday’s pitfalls, many hailed the county’s decision on Friday to extend immunization eligibility to residents aged 65 to 69. 65 years and older were immediately eligible for the coronavirus vaccination. But Sonoma County, already facing a shortage of vaccine doses last month, initially set the bar locally at 75. Two weeks ago, the county expanded eligibility to people 70 and older.
Cronin, the owner of Pizza Place Rosso, was well aware of the study published by medical researchers at UC San Francisco in January concluding that among 25 jobs statewide with at least 100 deaths from a pandemic , the most dangerous was the line cook. Bakers and Chefs ranked 4th and 11th respectively, reflecting the high risk associated with the proximity and hectic activity of most restaurant kitchens.
Dean Molsberry, owner of Molsberry Market in the Larkfield-Wikiup neighborhood, has 72 employees who mostly want to be vaccinated, realizing the virus risk they face on a daily basis.
“If you’re an auditor, you deal with clients all day, every client that goes through the registry,” Molsberry said. “You are dealing with cash because people always want to pay with cash. People are now bringing bags. They’re going to shop in their bags, so they touch whatever you touch. “
Molsberry said the owners of Cal-Mart in Calistoga had arranged for a mobile vaccination team to come to the market to administer doses. But it is Napa County. Molsberry has not been able to gather information on whether this might work in Sonoma County.
“Even if we were to send rows of people (to Napa County), I would have no problem doing that,” he said.
Once the vaccine supply catches up with demand, both for senior citizens and food workers, knowing how to use a computer to register will remain one of the great obstacles to vaccination against a scourge that has now killed over 500,000 Americans.
“I’m not a super computer savvy guy,” Cronin said. “I own a business, I know how to get around, but I’m not like some of these young people. But the guys in my kitchen just don’t know how.
You can reach Phil Barber at 707-521-5263 or [email protected]. On Twitter @Skinny_Post.
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