Sutter Health is canceling up to 95,000 vaccine appointments at mass vaccination sites across northern California because of ongoing supply problems and insufficient vaccine allocation in recent weeks, the health provider said in a statement on Tuesday .
Of these, 90,000 are for second doses and 5,000 are first doses.
“We are concerned about the impact this will have on our elderly and vulnerable patients,” said a spokesman for Sutter.
Sutter is calling the patients and will put them on a priority list when a new supply arrives.
Sutter’s spokesman said the state advised the provider to use its initial vaccine allocations for the first doses. “We were told that the state would supply our supply for the second doses,” said the spokesman. But allocation for the second doses has not yet arrived and only a drop of the vaccine has been distributed to Sutter’s sites in recent weeks.
Sutter administers the COVID-19 vaccine to his patients at mass vaccination sites; there are several in the bay area, including the Santa Clara Convention Center, the Alameda County Fairgrounds, the San Mateo Event Center and the San Francisco Produce Market.
Because of a shortage of supply, Sutter first discontinued all new first dose appointments in February and is now postponing the first dose appointments indefinitely until March 9.
The provider is in the process of alerting patients with consultations for the second dose scheduled by March 9 that the appointment needs to be canceled.
Sutter said he plans to call patients in seven to ten days to reschedule.
“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 said in a statement. “This is an extremely unfortunate situation for our patients and can be avoided if we can get an additional supply of vaccine.”