In the largest one-day expansion of the Sonoma County coronavirus vaccination clinic network, 11 new immunization sites opened on Monday at local Safeway pharmacies.
The county has expanded its campaign against the virus on a second front as well, making people 70 and older eligible for doses for the first time. Previously, the county has restricted its supply of vaccine to people aged 75 and over since it began immunizing the general public on January 27, although some hospitals and private clinics have vaccinated even younger members of their health networks using their own lots.
With two other major clinics scheduled to open in Windsor and Petaluma later this week, the county is about to significantly increase its program to vaccinate all consenting adults against a scourge that claimed at least 277 lives and infected almost 27,000 people in Sonoma Municipality. .
“We are succeeding,” said county supervisor Susan Gorin. “We are opening more distribution sites. See how many people we vaccinated. And we are reducing the age of eligibility and doing so very successfully. But patience is the key. “
Safeway’s expansion is a big step for the county, taking the vaccination campaign from hospitals and distribution centers to neighborhood supermarkets. The 11 participating Safeways include four in Santa Rosa and one in Sevastopol, Rohnert Park, Windsor, Guerneville, Healdsburg, Petaluma and Sonoma. Each can administer 20 doses of Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna vaccine per day.
However, as with practically all stages of the vaccination effort, this latest expansion was accompanied by confusion. Safeway’s limited scheduling time disappeared so quickly that many county residents were left believing that the login site was not working. By late Monday afternoon, those who were not lucky enough to book were already looking at an appointment schedule without a single available time.
This does not appear to be a local problem. No future appointments were available on Monday afternoon within a 50-mile radius of randomly selected zip codes in Sacramento, San Francisco, Fresno, Los Angeles and San Diego on the Albertsons COVID-19 vaccine website, created by the corporate owner of Safeway .
Sonoma County Chief Vaccine Dr Urmila Shende and Vaccine Coordinator Ken Tasseff saw the same landscape when they explored the Safeway site on Friday and Saturday. On Saturday afternoon, Shende said, everything was packed.
“We realized that this reflects the desire, the demand and the interest out there, the anxiety that everyone feels about being able to get a vaccine,” said Shende.
She added that the county will ask about increasing capacity at some of Safeway pharmacies. “But this is the reality of our situation, that we limit the supply of vaccines and we have a significant population that is eligible for it,” said Shende. “We are trying. But the math is just against us.”
A Safeway representative said that checking the site remains the best way to get an appointment through the company, rather than calling local pharmacies.
“New appointments are added to the online programmer as more vaccine becomes available,” she said by email. “Demand is high and appointments are often requested very quickly, and we ask the public to remain patient. As dose allocations increase, so will the opportunity to guarantee an appointment. “
Even those who can guarantee Safeway commitments found the process intriguing. That includes Susan Herman, who is 72 and lives in Petaluma. On Friday, before the crush, she managed to book a first dose with Safeway. She received a link and an exemption form and, subsequently, a secure e-mail requesting an access code that should be used in an hour. The code she received did not work.
Unable to contact Safeway customer service, Herman called the local pharmacy directly. After several transfers and 30 minutes of waiting, the pharmacist told Herman that she had no appointment.
“He then suggested that I return to the dysfunctional location to reschedule, saying that there were still vaccines left,” said Herman.
In addition to the new Safeway locations, the county is planning to open a vaccination clinic on the Santa Rosa Junior College Petaluma campus on Tuesday, and another at the Huerta gym in Windsor on Wednesday. The first will be administered by Petaluma Health Center, the second by Alliance Medical Center. Each of these sites will have a capacity of 300 doses per day. In addition, CVS Health will begin administering public vaccines at the CVS pharmacy in Sonoma on Thursday.
By the end of the week, Sonoma County is expected to have 19 clinics approved and supervised by county officials, including existing locations in Cloverdale, Guerneville and Sevastopol, and the Grace Pavilion and Oakmont Village in Santa Rosa. They are all managed by third parties. Tasseff said the cumulative capacity is at least 2,000 doses per day.
Gorin said an additional clinic will open in Sonoma next week at Veterans Memorial Hall.
These locations do not include the many doses of vaccine administered by the county’s three major hospital systems – Kaiser Permanente, Sutter Health and St. Joseph Health – or by federally qualified health centers.
All sites will be open to everyone aged 70 and over. Monday was the first day the county used this limit after originally setting the mark at 75 or more. The clinic run by OptumServe in Rohnert Park continues to be reserved for more than 75 people, an indication of the line that the county is trying to walk between vaccinating its most vulnerable residents and distributing doses to an anxious audience as efficiently as possible.
People aged 75 and over represent 7.5% of the Sonoma County population, but were responsible for 65% of COVID-related deaths here. Whether the cut is 75 or 70, the county criterion differs from the state recommendation of 65, a misalignment that has caused waves of confusion and frustration among older people trying to get vaccinated.
As of Monday, 67,745 doses have been administered in the county since mid-December, including 12,277 people who received each of the two recommended doses.
You can contact Phil Barber at 707-521-5263 or [email protected]. On Twitter @Skinny_Post.