Sutter Health is canceling or postponing 40,000 vaccine appointments for second-dose vaccines, including at its nine mass vaccination sites in Northern California, because it does not have enough vaccine stock, Sutter said on Tuesday.
These consultations were scheduled to take place between now and March 9. Sutter may also have to cancel or postpone another 50,000 vaccine appointments that have been scheduled for March 10 and later, if he no longer receives vaccine supplies from the state.
Sutter is calling or emailing affected patients to notify them and plans to reschedule appointments within the next seven to 10 days. If Sutter receives more vaccine, it may be possible to avoid some cancellations. The majority of affected patients are 65 years of age or older or health professionals. Sutter’s mass vaccination sites include the SF Market in Bayview.
“We have urgently requested the additional allocations that we need from the state to avoid canceling the more than 90,000 second-dose vaccination appointments currently in our books,” Sutter spokeswoman Monique Binkley Smith said in a statement. “This is an extremely unfortunate situation for our patients and it will be preventable if we can get an additional supply of vaccine.”
People who have their second dose consultations canceled or postponed by Sutter may try to make an appointment elsewhere to get their second dose, such as Walgreens, CVS or another vaccination site. They must bring the vaccination card for the first dose so that vaccinators know whether to apply the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine.
The Pfizer and Moderna vaccines should be given three or four weeks apart, more or less, but the CDC said the second dose could be given up to six weeks later.
The supply of unreliable vaccine has been a problem throughout the vaccination campaign. Some vaccination sites have had to suspend appointments for the first dose because they have had to use their vaccine supply to fulfill appointments for the second dose for people who have taken the first dose a few weeks earlier. Local health professionals and health departments are usually given a few days’ notice of how many doses they will receive. Last month, Kaiser had to cancel 5,200 vaccination appointments in Santa Clara County because he did not receive enough vaccine.
Sutter was assured that he would get enough vaccine from the state to meet 40,000 appointments for the second dose, but he has not yet received the requested supply. The vaccinators were instructed to apply as many vaccines as possible in the first dose and not to retain the vaccine for the second doses, and that sufficient vaccine would come later for the second doses.
Vaccine allocations are largely administered by the state, which obtains its allocation from the federal government and decides how many doses go to providers like Sutter and the county’s public health departments. There are some exceptions, such as some pharmacies that receive doses directly from the federal government.
“Each county, each state, each country wants to have more vaccines and is limited by manufacturing, but California continues to work closely with the Biden administration to increase supplies to suppliers across the state,” said Sami Gallegos, a spokesman. voice from the California Public Department Health’s COVID-19 vaccine task force.
Blue Shield of California, which manages the distribution of the vaccine on behalf of the state, did not immediately answer a question about why Sutter’s distribution of the vaccine was less than requested. Blue Shield CEO Paul Markovich told ABC 7 News that Sutter’s data “was not getting to the state”, leading the state to incorrectly believe for many weeks that Sutter had “a large stock of doses”.
“We are going to put a lot more doses on Sutter in the coming weeks so that they can reschedule these appointments instead of canceling them,” said Markovich.
Catherine Ho is a writer for the San Francisco Chronicle. Email: [email protected] Twitter: @Cat_Ho