After a year marked by dark milestones, California overcame a promising obstacle in its fight against COVID-19: administering its tenth millionth dose of vaccine.
Authorities confirmed on Friday that the state had crossed the threshold, boosted by a single-day record in terms of inoculations, with 330,155 vaccines dispensed.
Over the past week, providers across California administered just over 251,000 doses a day – the highest continuous average to date, according to data compiled by The Times.
Nearly 77% of the 13.1 million doses of the COVID-19 vaccine distributed to local public health departments and medical service providers across the state have been distributed.
“The light at the end of the tunnel gets brighter and brighter,” Governor Gavin Newsom tweeted on Friday.
Approximately 6.64 million Californians – or 21% of those who are at least 16 years old – have already received at least one vaccine, according to the state’s Department of Public Health.
More than 3 million Californians have received the two necessary doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna vaccines. This represents about 10% of the population aged 16 and over.
Among those who are fully vaccinated are almost 1.5 million people aged 65 and over, which represents about 23% of the state’s elderly population.
Despite reaching the 10 million dose mark, authorities across the state say they continue to be hampered by a limited supply of vaccines, which undermined the state’s initial goal of administering more than 12.5 million doses by the end of the year. end of February.
Newsom said this week that the state is working to design a system that can deliver 4 million vaccines a week. However, next week, California is expected to receive only about 1.62 million doses.
The only constraint, the governor said on Thursday, “is the supply of manufactured goods.”
State officials at a vaccine advisory committee meeting on Friday said the hope was that allocations would increase in the long run. Shipments are expected to grow in the coming months, and the launch of Johnson & Johnson’s single-dose vaccine will also increase supplies.
But in the short term, vaccines will remain scarce as more second doses are booked, while an increasing number of people dispute the initial vaccines as eligibility increases.
Significant changes are also underway for California’s vaccination strategy.
This week, authorities announced that the state will now send 40% of its vaccine supply to underserved communities. Specifically, this portion will be earmarked for the lowest 25% of census tracts classified in the California Healthy Places Index – a measure of socioeconomic opportunity that takes into account economic, social, educational, housing and transportation factors.
The state will also begin making the vaccine available to people with basic health problems on March 15.
Currently, the vaccine is available to people aged 65 and over, residing in long-term care facilities, such as nursing homes, or working in education and daycare, food and agriculture, health, law enforcement or emergency services.