With COVID-19 vaccines still scarce in California, there is a growing debate over who should receive the next priority for vaccines and how soon the state can step up efforts to better meet the growing demand.
The state has launched a high-level task force to define the logistics of how residents with disabilities and underlying health conditions will be prioritized next, state officials announced at the vaccine advisory committee meeting on Wednesday.
The group spent significant time discussing how these residents will be considered in the state’s priority guidance – a recommendation that could come as early as Friday.
“We are taking this very seriously. This is the next priority group, ”said state epidemiologist Dr. Erica Pan.
The committee’s current proposal is that individuals aged 16 to 64 with health problems or disabilities be the next eligible group in the distribution of the vaccine.
It was not immediately clear whether the recommendations would usurp previous plans to target a list of priorities based on age or how eligibility would be determined. It was also unclear when vaccines would be available for these groups.
Other segments of the population are also struggling to have faster access to vaccines, including essential workers and teachers, who have made vaccination a necessary step back to school.
Teachers and those working in food and emergency services have priority after health professionals, employees of long-term care facilities and residents and adults aged 65 and over. But the limited supply of vaccines has made that schedule difficult to set.
LA County Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer said on Wednesday that “limited vaccine supplies require a balance of priorities.”
Among the groups to be considered are people whose age, underlying health conditions or other circumstances put them at greater risk of dying from COVID-19. Other Angelenos work in environments with a high risk of transmitting the coronavirus and can take the virus home with them. Others are employed in fields that provide essential public services.
“There are many people who need to be vaccinated, and it is very difficult to determine which of these priorities is most urgent, urgent and important,” she said during an interview on Wednesday. “So, we’re all going to need to be patient.”
Ferrer said the county administered about 1 million doses of vaccine, just a fraction of what is needed for its more than 10 million residents. But supplies are inconsistent.
In LA County, 193,950 doses arrived in the week of January 11, but only 168,575 were delivered the following week and 146,225 the following week.
“The name of the game now is to keep everyone alive,” said Ferrer. “This is the number one priority for us … getting as many people as possible so that we can stay alive during this pandemic and reduce the risk for those who are most at risk of dying.”
The scarcity across the state is so acute that some California counties that have started offering vaccines to lower priority groups, such as teachers, day care centers and others who work in educational settings, have stopped vaccinating this group to focus on the elderly.
Marin County announced on January 21 that supply constraints forced him to prioritize vaccination for people aged 75 and over, and authorities stopped scheduling appointments for people in lower priority groups.
A joint statement by eight local health agencies in the bay area on Wednesday said the authorities would give priority to health professionals, people living in long-term care settings and the elderly. Marin, Napa, Santa Cruz and Solano counties are prioritizing residents 75 and older; while Contra Costa, San Francisco, San Mateo and Santa Clara counties are prioritizing people aged 65 and over.
“Three out of four COVID-19 deaths in Marin occur among our residents aged 75 and over. A vaccine offered to a resident over 75 is more than 300 times more likely to save a life than a vaccine offered to someone under 50, ”said Dr. Matt Willis, Marin County health officer , in a statement.
“Across the region, most deaths from COVID-19 occurred in the age group of 65 or older. Therefore, focusing vaccination efforts on those most at risk of death will have the greatest immediate impact in saving lives, ”said the joint statement.
The Bay Area does not have enough vaccines to inoculate all residents aged 65 and over, let alone other groups of workers who are next on the list of priorities suggested by the state: educators, food and agriculture workers and first responders.
Weekly dose allocations across the Bay Area – received from a formula designed to ensure fair distribution across the state – have decreased compared to shipments in December and early January. At the current rate, it will take several weeks to offer a first dose to all elderly people who want to be vaccinated, officials said.
“We need to be direct and honest with the public that, although we want to vaccinate everyone at the moment, we just don’t have enough vaccine for that,” Dr. Sara Cody, health officer and public health director for Santa Clara County, said in a statement. communicated.
“Given the limited supply of vaccine, we should prioritize vaccination for those most at risk of death or serious illness,” she said. “We are looking forward to vaccinating a much wider segment of the population and we are ready to do so as soon as the vaccine supply allows.”
While federal officials said on Wednesday that more vaccines will come soon, local health jurisdictions in California, including LA County, have complained that their weekly remittances are actually getting smaller, not bigger.
“We are constantly increasing the amount of vaccine we send to states,” said Jeff Zients, chairman of President Biden’s COVID-19 task force, on Wednesday. “We anticipate, as we work hard to monitor, help and assist manufacturers, that we will continue to see increases in supply.”
Governor Gavin Newsom said on Wednesday that he expects California to receive about 1.06 million doses of vaccine this week, an amount he said was “encouraging”. Still, he said California – like the rest of the country – remains “limited based on supply”.
“We recognize what you recognize: there are parts of the state that are already running out of vaccines, where they are decreasing in terms of dose allocation because they are running out,” he said. “The federal government has no dose to support states like ours on the scale that we would all like to see.”
However, the pace of vaccinations has accelerated in recent weeks. About 7.4% of Californians received at least one dose, according to data compiled by The Times, and California administered nearly 63% of the doses it received – a dramatic improvement over the previous week.
Amid this increase, defenders of the disabled have been struggling to ensure that this group receives a higher priority.
“I am grateful that the state made it clear for the first time today that people with high-risk disabilities and underlying health problems will be the next priority population and are working with us to come up with an implementation plan. I will feel much better when they commit to a deadline to vaccinate high-risk people with disabilities, ”said Andy Imparato, executive director of Disability Rights California and a member of the vaccine advisory committee, on Wednesday.
“It appears that we are being talked about and that the State Department of Public Health does not really understand how to prioritize and vaccinate high-risk individuals with disabilities,” he said, noting that although the state has hinted that it will update its guidelines, the plan has not yet been defined.
As for teachers, state and federal authorities have been insisting for some time that campuses for students from kindergarten through 12th grade can safely reopen without teachers being vaccinated – and they reiterated that on Wednesday.
“There is growing data that suggests that schools can reopen safely, and that safe reopening does not suggest that teachers need to be vaccinated,” said Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the new director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, at a White House COVID-19 response team briefing.
When asked about the comments of the CDC director, Newsom said he endorses “the Biden government’s point of view, reinforced again today in his press conference, that we can safely reopen schools with [an] appropriate level of support. “
The Times staff writer Howard Blume contributed to this report.