This Saturday, San Diego County will begin vaccinating police, teachers, farm workers and many others in an attempt to boost immunity against the coronavirus.
In all, 500,000 San Diegans that fall into the categories of emergency services; child care and education; and food and agriculture will be eligible for their vaccines.
The vaccination of some of these groups will be carried out through targeted efforts. For example, elementary and high school teachers and staff will be immunized through a program led by the San Diego County Office of Education and the California School Volunteer Employee Association (VEBA), an organization that offers employee benefits. health care for school staff.
Vaccine doses will be prioritized for school officials in districts that are open or plan to open. Within these districts, schools in the postal codes most affected by the pandemic will be the first in line.
Supervisor Nathan Fletcher says the county will set aside 20% of its vaccine supply for this program – double the amount the state plans to allocate to educators.
“Our goal is to vaccinate these people as quickly as possible,” said Fletcher during Wednesday’s coronavirus meeting.
Although information about the program is posted on vebavaccinates.com, county officials said that elementary and high school teachers and staff will not need to schedule their own appointments, as this will be coordinated by school districts.
Immunizations for county police will be handled with the help of Scripps Health, one of the two largest health systems in the region. And San Diego firefighters will go to the fields to vaccinate farm workers.
All other San Diegans who fall into groups that soon qualify (for example, grocery workers) will be able to make an appointment at one of the region’s vaccine superstores or smaller locations, with location and registration information available at vaccinationsuperstationsd.com.
But getting an appointment will not be easy, as the number of eligible San Diegans will decrease the region’s stock of doses.
“There will be considerable pressure on the vaccination system and the appointment system,” said Fletcher. “As soon as we get the vaccines, we schedule the appointments. And probably as soon as we make them available in the next week or two, they will probably leave immediately. “
The uncertainty surrounding supply has been one of the few constant during an ever-changing deployment. This is true, despite President Joe Biden’s promise to give states an ongoing estimate of how much vaccine they can expect in the next three weeks.
Apparently, that information is not being passed on to the county, which Fletcher says is lucky when he knows how much vaccine is coming in three days.
But he noted that vaccine manufacturers said they would increase production and that doses delayed by winter storms are flowing into the county.
There is another reason to expect the supply to increase. On Friday, a panel of researchers will vote on the recommendation that the Food and Drug Administration authorize Johnson & Johnson’s COVID-19 vaccine.
If that happens, the first doses may arrive on Monday, according to Dr. Wilma Wooten, a county public health officer. But she said the municipality does not know how many doses it will receive. And neither Wooten nor Fletcher addressed precisely how the county is going to incorporate a third coronavirus vaccine into the region’s distribution.
“There are ongoing conversations about how best to use the J&J vaccine in the context of others,” said Fletcher, referring to the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines. “But in general, the presence of the J&J vaccine will make things easier, rather than difficult.”
Unlike the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines, the Johnson & Johnson vaccine requires a single dose. This could be useful at a time when about 330,000 San Diegans are waiting to receive their second dose of vaccine. In many cases, these consultations have been delayed due to supply problems.
As the vaccine launches, San Diego’s coronavirus metrics continue to improve. On Wednesday, the county reported 658 new coronavirus infections; it is 13 consecutive days that the new cases are below the 1,000 mark. And the total number of San Diegans hospitalized with COVID-19 has dropped to 602, with 23 new hospitalizations. Twelve additional COVID-19 deaths bring the county total to 3,230.
At this rate, the county could resume outdoor high school sports next week and move from the state’s most restrictive reopening level, the purple level, to the next level (red level) in the coming weeks. This would allow restaurants and gyms to resume limited domestic operations, along with other gradual openings in the region’s economy.
But recent reports have raised concerns that new strains of the coronavirus could undo the region’s arduous progress.
A study led by UC San Francisco researchers used genetic analysis to identify the viral variants present in 630 positive coronavirus tests and found that about half of the samples collected between January 10 and 27 had mutations indicative of new “California” variants of pathogen – a sharp increase of 16 percent in the samples analyzed in November.
The report fueled fears that these variants, which appear to be more infectious than other types, will soon cause another wave of disease across the country.
Asked on Wednesday to comment on the report, Dr. Eric McDonald, medical director of the county’s epidemiology department, said that the genetic analysis carried out in San Diego County by Scripps Research estimates that between 30% and 40% of the samples return locally appear to be caused by California variants.
But he also noted that it is too early to say with certainty whether these homemade versions really pose a greater threat.
He added that overall figures continued to decline, although the California variant was present during the recent increase in hospitalizations in December and January.
“We have no evidence in San Diego that these variants are actually more contagious or have higher rates of disease and mortality associated with them,” said McDonald.
Kristian Andersen, the molecular biologist at Scripps Research, whose team sequenced thousands of coronavirus genomes in San Diego, said his concern remains B.1.1.7, a variant first detected in the UK.
“Yes, the California variant has increased – and it is probably a little more transmissible than the non-Californian variants – but nowhere near as transmissible as B.1.1.7.”, Said Andersen in an email. “We expect B.1.1.7 to become dominant in the coming weeks – probably from the beginning to mid-March.
“This will likely eliminate the CA variant.”