Bay Area residents make up just 2% of the nearly 10 million people who live in CEPs scheduled to receive additional coronavirus vaccines under a new state plan announced this week, although the nine counties region accounts for 20% of the population state, according to a Chronicle data review.
The new strategy will allocate 40% of the state’s vaccine supply to 446 of the lowest-income zip codes in California starting next week. It aims to make the distribution of the vaccine more equitable across all income levels.
The infection rate for families earning less than $ 40,000 a year is double that of families with an income of $ 120,000 or more, according to Governor Gavin Newsom’s office. Meanwhile, California’s wealthiest people are being vaccinated at nearly twice the rate of the state’s most vulnerable residents.
Officials said the plan does not mean that other CEPs will receive less vaccine than they did previously, but it could cause these areas to receive a smaller increase than they would otherwise receive.
The 10 million population differs from the 8 million people the state said would benefit from the plan because The Chronicle looked at the entire population at each CEP, while the California Department of Public Health included only people aged 16 or over. more because that is who is eligible for vaccines now.
Most counties in the Bay Area – Santa Clara, San Mateo, Marin, Sonoma and Napa – do not have zip codes included in the state’s vaccine equality effort, despite housing low-income neighborhoods that have been disproportionately impacted by the pandemic.
The reason the Bay Area was largely circumvented by the Newsom plan is partly due to the fact that most of the lowest CEPs in the state’s Healthy Places Index – which brings together dozens of economic and social measures in one only score – it is in rural areas and central and southern California. The state is using the index to identify areas it considers most in need of vaccines.
More than 90% of residents in Merced County, for example, live in CEPs targeted by the state proposal due to their low score on the Healthy Places Index. Half of San Bernardino County residents are in CEPs being prioritized for vaccination.
Meanwhile, only 4% of San Francisco residents, 3% of Contra Costa County residents and 7% of Alameda County residents are in the affected zip codes, the Chronicle review of public health data, census and Department of Health found. Finance.
The state’s formula for determining 446 zip codes leaves out many low-income regions of the Bay Area, including Southeast San Francisco, West Oakland and East San Jose. Local health departments, community clinics and advocacy groups have been working for months to target vaccination to residents of these areas, as they are among the hardest hit groups where the virus is most prevalent.
“It’s a disappointment,” said Jessica Paz-Cedillos, executive director of the Mexican Heritage Plaza School of Arts and Culture. His organization is one of five branches of Coletivo Sí Se Puede, which advocates prioritizing East San Jose in pandemic response policies.
“Here in East San Jose, where Coletivo Sí Se Puede does the work, this has been (an area) that has been hit hard,” she said. “The affected communities are predominantly Latino, working class, immigrants.”
Some health providers who are vaccinating residents in the poorest and most affected communities in the bay area said they did not know whether the policy change would mean more vaccines coming their way.
“We haven’t heard anything yet, but I hope it will allow us to do more vaccinations,” said Dr. Michael Stacey, medical director at LifeLong Medical Care, which operates several vaccination sites in Oakland, San Pablo and Richmond. LifeLong had to decrease the number of visits to its vaccination clinics in San Pablo and Richmond because they did not receive enough vaccine.
In comments on Friday, Secretary of Health and Human Services, Mark Ghaly, said: “Obviously, we are working to ensure that all counties, with the provision of the vaccine they receive, target the most affected in their counties” .
Joaquin Palomino and Catherine Ho are writers for the San Francisco Chronicle. Email: [email protected], [email protected] Twitter: @JoaquinPalomino, @Cat_Ho