San Diego County officials said on Wednesday that winter storms across the country would force the temporary closure of some vaccination clinics.
County supervisor Nathan Fletcher said during a weekly update on COVID-19 that supply lines to locations where Pfizer and Moderna produce the doses that the entire country depends on are simply frozen at the moment. The main manufacturing facilities for the country’s two coronavirus vaccines are in Massachusetts and Michigan.
“Both, along with the routes back and forth, have been affected by the snow and winter weather conditions that we are seeing across the country,” said Fletcher. “It will affect our ability to administer vaccines this week.”
He said the effects of reducing the supply of climate-related vaccine will be immediately noticeable to the thousands who mark the first or second dose.
“We hope, already tomorrow, to have to pause some of our vaccine locations,” said the supervisor. “It is also very likely that we will have to reschedule appointments.”
According to the county’s COVID-19 vaccination panel, 135,151 of 473,763 people across the region received two doses and were fully vaccinated on Wednesday.
This leaves more than 330,000 people receiving just one dose and waiting for the second, which should be administered 21 or 28 days after the first.
The county did not provide any information on Wednesday about how many of that number are arriving this week or next and may need to be postponed due to already inadequate supplies.
Authorities confirmed on Wednesday that the county will begin to reserve some doses for residents in parts of the region considered disadvantaged, but no information was available on how much of the shrinking supply will be withheld or what the expected effect will be on overall supply availability. for the second and first doses.
“There will be enormous pressure on the system to fulfill second dose commitments, which means, preventing any significant change in [the] supply chain, the availability of appointments for the first dose over the next week to 10 days is likely to be very limited, ”said Fletcher.
The United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently declared that second doses can be administered up to six weeks after the first doses, in situations where supplies are limited.
Dr. Wilma Wooten, a county public health officer, said she was not concerned that the delays would push second doses beyond six weeks.
“I think we’ll be fine,” she said, adding that while the CDC recommends a second dose within six weeks of the first, those who receive a second one even later “should not be forced to start the series again.”
Some reported long waits to access the super vaccination station near Petco Park on Wednesday morning, the first time the site was active and vaccinating again after a hiatus due to limited supplies. One woman said she waited more than two hours in her car trying to take the second dose. Traffic control, she said, was minimal, with many drivers passing in front of others entering the line of vehicles through the side streets.
Fletcher said he did not know what was causing the situation, and officials at UC San Diego, who run the site, were not available to discuss the matter on Wednesday afternoon.
People line up for the COVID-19 vaccination after it reopened at Petco’s San Diego vaccination site on Wednesday.
(Eduardo Contreras / San Diego Union-Tribune)
No vaccine is 100% effective, even when two doses are administered perfectly on time. Evidence of this fact has now appeared in San Diego with Dr. Eric McDonald, medical director of the county’s epidemiology department, indicating that a local health professional who was fully vaccinated subsequently tested positive for coronavirus infection after being exposed. McDonald said little about the situation other than indicating that confirmation of the infection had arrived at his office 48 hours earlier.
Overall, San Diego coronavirus activity continues to decline, with 539 new infections listed in Wednesday’s report. Intensive care cases and the overall volume of the hospital are also decreasing. Another 57 COVID-related deaths were listed.
Sisson writes for the San Diego Union-Tribune.