Vaccine eligibility open to people as young as 50 years old

There is also an urgent need to vaccinate everyone, the counties say, as even more dangerous strains of coronavirus, including the virulent Brazilian variety, have now reached the Bay Area.

“Except we don’t have the vaccine,” Santa Clara County vaccine manager Dr Marty Fenstersheib said at a press briefing last week. According to him, the county has 400,000 people aged 50 to 64 and the capacity to immunize 200,000 people every week. But with just 58,000 doses per week coming from the state – not counting the thousands of doses that go to Kaiser – the county was only able to immunize a third of those eligible.

And that was before eligibility was set to swell like a tidal wave with the age criteria expanded.

At this point, “if we don’t have enough vaccines, it will be a pandemonium at the sites,” said Peter Shih, immunization manager for the San Mateo County Department of Health.

In San Francisco, the City College of San Francisco mass vaccination site will quietly celebrate Thursday’s widening of eligibility: it will be closed.

“We’re not open until Friday because we don’t have a vaccine,” said Kim Murphy, director of operations for the site, which is managed by UCSF.

“I’m extremely worried,” said Tina Valentine, 57, an event producer in San Francisco who sometimes has to work with others in person. “I’m really worried that I will be left out, and as soon as April 1 rolls around the system will be inundated with requests and there won’t be enough vaccines available.”

Her husband, Mark Valentine, 59, had no problem finding a date for Friday through the Kaiser site. But when Tina tried he said she wasn’t eligible.

“I am upset and perplexed by the system,” she said. “And upset that our local and national governments have not been able to come up with something better and more coherent. It seems random.

Since December, California has slowly expanded the groups of people eligible for the vaccine. Health care providers were first, followed by other essential workers, those over 75, then 65, and this month the youngest with health issues that make them particularly vulnerable to coronavirus. But as the move to recall Newsom gained traction – fueled by Republicans and others eager to reopen California’s economy – the governor stepped up vaccine eligibility.

In what could be a glimpse of what will unfold statewide over the next few weeks, Contra Costa County – which on Tuesday became the first Bay Area county to expand eligibility to everyone. world – said it would likely take three to four weeks for the offer to catch up. request. About 375,000 people in the county became newly eligible on Tuesday, far exceeding the 20,000 open date slots.

“In a few weeks we will be able to overcome the backlog,” said Dr Ori Tzvieli, deputy director of health for Contra Costa County. “Please be patient with us.”

State officials and the Biden administration have promised vaccines will soon become abundant, but that has yet to happen.

“Every city, county and state has more capacity to deliver vaccines than there is supply,” said Darrel Ng, spokesperson for the state’s COVID-19 Vaccine Task Force .

Ng said the problem was with manufacturers failing to produce enough vaccines – but he said that was about to change.

“California received 2.4 million doses next week, an increase of 300,000 from this week,” he said. In contrast, a month ago the state was receiving just 1.5 million doses per week, he said.

However, Napa County is receiving fewer doses of the vaccine than in previous weeks, county spokeswoman Janet Upton said.

The San Francisco COVID Command Center said the vaccines arriving in San Francisco are “limited, inconsistent and unpredictable.” For this reason, and because many of those most in need have yet to be vaccinated, as are those in need of a second dose, the center warned that those newly eligible “may find it difficult to get their first. appointment for the vaccine in the coming weeks ”.

Additionally, not everyone in the older and more vulnerable groups has been vaccinated yet. In Marin County, for example, only 68% of people over 65 are fully vaccinated and 13% are halfway through, still needing a second dose of the Moderna or Pfizer two-dose regimen, reported the count.

In the past two weeks, a handful of counties across the state – including Contra Costa and Solano in the Bay Area – have started extending eligibility early to people as young as 50. Within 24 hours This expansion at John Muir Health in Contra Costa County, 90% of its open appointments have ended, said Ben Drew, a spokesperson for John Muir.

So, will the next two weeks give enough time to vaccinate newly eligible people before the start of the so-called open season, with everyone over 16 eligible, on April 15?

“It’s a crystal ball question,” said Shende of Sonoma County. “It really depends on the vaccine supply, which we have no idea or control over.”

It will also depend on how many people choose to be vaccinated and whether vaccines will be made more accessible to people who do not have internet access, time or transportation to get to vaccination sites. which in many places rely heavily on online booking. . National polls show that a growing proportion of Americans want to be vaccinated, but there will likely be reluctance.

In Butte County, where eligibility was extended to all people 16 and over on Monday, it is not clear whether there will be enough supply, as it depends on how many new eligible people want. get vaccinated, county health director Danette York said. Younger people may not be as excited as older people, and some people may want to wait until the time when Johnson & Johnson’s single dose vaccine becomes available.

“There’s no way to tell until we open it up and see what kind of response we get,” York said. “It looks like there may be a few things going on. The first is that the younger the group, the fewer people who want the vaccine, which is great. It’s everyone’s personal choice. … The other thing that worries me is that people are waiting to have more Johnson & Johnson vaccine available because it’s a single dose.