About 100,000 doses of the COVID-19 vaccine are in freezers waiting to be administered in Santa Clara County, new data show.
Santa Clara is one of the first counties to release COVID-19 data on how many doses are going to each provider and how many are being used.
As of Thursday, of all 280,000 doses received by providers, more than 96,000 remain unused.
While major providers of medical services like Stanford Health and Kaiser Permanente administered more than 70% of their doses, smaller providers appear to be struggling, the data revealed.
North East Medical Services (NEMS) in San Jose, which specifically targets underserved Asian communities, had the lowest injection rate with only 12% of its doses administered. They had almost 2,000 doses waiting.
Two other providers that also serve vulnerable minority populations also appear to be experiencing a difficult time. Asian Americans for Community Engagement (AACI) administered 21% of their vaccine supply and more than 1,000 doses remained. And Bay Area Community Health (BACH) managed 22% of its stock and had almost two thousand unused doses.
“It’s been really crazy. There is a lot of hesitation about vaccination in our population as well, ”said Dr. Kenneth Tai, Medical Director of NEMS. Tai said his organization and other smaller providers and clinics are facing unique challenges in reaching some of the most vulnerable populations in our community.
“We literally had the vaccines last week. Only internally, we have to train our team how to do the questionnaire, how to do the injections, etc. Most of them are working overtime, ”said Dr. Tai.
BACH sent an email to our Investigation Unit saying that its unused doses are the result of:
- Extreme weather conditions destroying some of its vaccine structures
- Many of your patients are taking the wait and see approach
- Getting patients over 75 to schedule appointments is a publicity challenge
- Most community clinics do not have scalable technology platforms for scheduling
“Those in underserved communities are at the greatest risk of not receiving the vaccine in a timely manner,” said Graham Knaus of the California State County Association. “We are redoubling our efforts to try to reach these communities in a system that is incredibly complex and changes every day.”
Smaller providers, such as NEMS, said they administered more doses than is reflected in the data. Currently, there is no uniform county, state or federal vaccination reporting system, so some providers are forced to create their own workflows.
Our Investigation Unit has contacted other counties to compare data, but Contra Costa, Alameda, San Mateo and San Francisco counties have not yet released information based on suppliers.
“We are doing our best to put vaccines in people’s arms and we want to do the job,” said Dr. Tai.
Candice Nguyen is an investigative reporter for the NBC Bay Area. To contact her about this story or others, send an email to candice.nguyen@nbcuni.com.