While thousands of people scour Web sites daily in Santa Clara County for a coveted indication of the COVID vaccine, it was a shocking revelation that in just five days, more than 4,000 people with confirmed appointments did not show up for the vaccine.
About 10% of vaccine appointments made in places administered by the county do not happen, and because of that, on Saturday, at the Santa Clara County fairgrounds, there were about 300 extra vaccines that have already been thawed and set to expire at following day.
Dozens of Santa Clara County employees rushed to the fair grounds in San Jose on Saturday after receiving phone calls and emails saying they could get a COVID vaccine at the last minute.
Some vaccination points opened in the Santa Clara County fairgrounds generated last-minute vaccines for those who were standing. Ian Cull reports.
The county public defender, Brett Hammond, fired the shot.
“I’m thrilled,” he said. “My mom lives ten minutes away and I haven’t been able to hug her for a year. In order to be able to meet with my family, but I don’t think I should just be alerted at 4pm on a Saturday that there are extra doses. I think public defenders should receive it because they have a lot of exposure. “
The county said that due to the increase in the number of people who did not attend COVID vaccine appointments, he had extra doses, so he approached the public and asked county officials to come and get a vaccine so they wouldn’t go to waste.
On Monday, the NBC Bay Area learned how big the problem of non-attendance is on county-run sites, including Levi’s Stadium.
From 8 to 12 February, a surprising number of 4,517 people did not attend their appointments.
The county said it does not know why there are so many absences. One possibility is that people are scheduling multiple appointments for fear that one will be canceled.
Last-minute vaccine leftovers at the fair site meant that some county officials who were not really eligible received a vaccine.
The director of the Stanford Center for Biomedical Ethics, Dr. David Magnus, said the county needs to plan better to ensure that vaccines are distributed fairly.
“Having a waiting list available and a plan to mitigate the problem so that you don’t have a good dose left over and little time to deal with it,” said Magnus.
The good news is that the county said there was no vaccine waste, despite the high number of absences.