With vaccination underway in California for top health care workers and long-term residents, a state advisory panel is trying to determine who will be next in line when the next wave of vaccines becomes available.
The decision of who comes next will depend heavily on public opinion, California’s surgeon general, Dr. Nadine Burke Harris, said during a meeting on Wednesday of the state’s community vaccine advisory committee. Distribution plans will also depend on guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The state expects to distribute between 2 million and 2.5 million doses of vaccines by the first week of January. This would include the Pfizer BioNTech vaccine and the recently authorized Modern vaccine.
By the end of February, that total is expected to reach 12.5 million – a note of hope, as California reached 2 million cases of coronavirus on Wednesday.
“There is less vaccine than people who need it, so we are having to make very difficult decisions,” said Dr. Oliver Brooks, co-chairman of the panel that drafted the state’s distribution guidelines.
The current proposal for the next phase, scheduled to start in January, includes people working in education and childcare, emergency services and agriculture, as well as people aged 75 and over.
Next would be those who work in critical manufacturing, commercial industrial facilities and transportation, as well as those between 65 and 74 years old and homeless individuals. Inmates are also included in this range, although at least one state prison has already started receiving the vaccine.
The Times confirmed on Tuesday that the California Health Center, Stockton, which houses inmates with special medical needs, received some of the first coronavirus vaccines.
Inmates in federal prisons would not receive state resources, but instead would receive vaccines through the federal supply, said Dr. Robert Schechter, head of the immunization section of the California Department of Public Health.
The advisory committee, separate from the 16-member committee that writes the guidelines, met for two hours in a video call at Zoom to talk about public comments and discuss plans to reach the most vulnerable and communities most affected by the virus.
Some expressed concern about focusing on age rather than disease. Others said that distribution plans should take into account people at risk who do not have access to a distribution location.
After the state deploys the vaccine in a county, it is up to local public health officials to determine how to distribute doses and reach people through appropriate messages.
There are 61 local public health departments in the state – one in each of 58 counties and in the cities of Pasadena, Long Beach and Berkeley. This means that distribution efforts will be different from rural communities to urban landscapes.
“I feel much more comfortable with the distribution of the vaccine than other elements of the response to the pandemic, because it is really a public health responsibility,” said Mariposa County Health Officer, Dr. Eric Sergienko.
The advisory committee meets again on 6 January. Those wishing to make public comments are advised to send an email to CDPH at [email protected].