Sacramento hospitals dispense thousands of COVID-19 vaccines. Who got them first

In the initial rollout of COVID-19 vaccines, the UC Davis Health system has administered shots to roughly 7,000 of its own employees, including 4,000 doctors and nurses, 200 pharmacists and 100 custodians.

Also included: members of the system’s administrative staff, including two public relations employees.

“I was in the hospital three days last week, and I was around multiple patients,” said one of the PR employees, Marianne Russ Sharp.

Like their brethren around the state, the Sacramento region’s hospital systems are wrestling with how to dispense their precious supplies of Pfizer and Moderna coronavirus vaccines. All say they are prioritizing workers, from technicians to food-service workers, who come into contact with patients, and are taking care to put those in the riskiest occupations at the front of the line.

Experts say there’s plenty of gray areas for the hospitals to navigate.

“The state’s guidelines are vague, to be honest,” said Andrew Noymer, a public health expert at UC Irvine.

A Southern California hospital came under scrutiny amid revelations that a Disney employee got a shot because of a connection with a hospital employee. Stanford University’s medical system was blasted after its initial allocation almost completely omitted hospital residents — medical school graduates who staff the facility.

On Monday, Gov. Gavin Newsom vowed to punish medical providers who pull strings to get shots for friends or relatives who aren’t health-care workers and aren’t yet entitled to the vaccine. “If you skip the line or you intend to skip the line, you will be sanctioned, you will lose your license,” the governor said.

Hospitals across the greater Sacramento region said they’re making at-risk employees their top priority.

“Generally, during this first phase, in accordance with guidance from public health officials, we have offered vaccine first to front-line health care workers who are at the highest risk for exposure based on the care environment in which they work and the nature of their contact with patients,” Sutter Health said in an emailed statement.

Kaiser Permanente, which has vaccinated more than 30,000 employees in Northern California, has ensured that “our most at-risk staff and physicians continue to be the first to receive the vaccination,” spokeswoman Chyresse Hill said in an email.

Similarly, Dignity Health, operator of the Mercy chain, said the earliest doses are going to health care workers “who are at significant personal risk” because of their jobs or age, said spokeswoman Yessenia Anderson.

Sharp said UC Davis Health “made a really strong effort to make sure our front-line, tier 1 people went first,” including therapists, technicians, doctors, nurses, food-service workers and custodians.

Only after that first wave of employees was vaccinated — a group covering more than 5,000 workers — did UC Davis begin offering shots to administrative and public relations workers, she said.

That includes Sharp and another public-relations employee, Pamela Wu.

Wu last week tweeted a photo of her vaccination card and a picture of herself with a bandage on her arm. “I want to protect my loved ones, myself and my community,” she wrote.

Wu couldn’t be reached for comment Tuesday but Sharp said she isn’t aware of any criticisms of how UC Davis is dispensing the vaccine.

A spokesman for AFSCME Local 3299, which represents more than 4,000 technicians, therapists, nursing aides and other UC Davis Health workers, said the union’s members have had no problems getting vaccines.

“Shots have been made available to all frontline staff on a voluntary basis,” said spokesman Todd Stenhouse. “I don’t have any reports of problems with access.”

Noymer said the allocations made by UC Davis appear to be appropriate. “Anyone in a patient-facing role ... should be prioritized,” the public health expert said.

He said the underlying issue is the scarcity of vaccines and the fact that it will take months to vaccinate the vast majority of Americans.

“If (hospitals) were getting boxes and boxes, they would just be giving this to everyone,” he said.

UC Davis has received about 9,000 doses so far, Sharp said. About 1,000 employees have made appointments to get vaccinated in the next few days. She said the health system doesn’t know when its next shipment will arrive.

“We just get it when we get it,” she said.

‘You have six hours to use that or lose that’

Embarrassing episodes have popped up.

Stanford hospital officials apologized after only seven of its 1,300 residents — medical school graduates who are still doctors in training — were selected for the initial round of vaccinations. Hundreds of residents staged a public protest over the allocation plan, which was based on a computer-generated algorithm and enabled higher-ranking doctors to get vaccinated despite having less contact with patients..

“We are working quickly to address the flaws in our plan and develop a revised version,” Stanford officials said in a prepared statement.

Meanwhile, Redlands Community Hospital in San Bernardino County came under criticism after a Disney employee bragged on Facebook that she received the Pfizer vaccine thanks to a relative with connections at the hospital. Redlands officials told the Los Angeles Times that they vaccinated several non-essential individuals, but only with doses that were left over after frontline workers had gotten their shots.

State guidelines dovetail recommendations from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and say first priority should go to health-care workers, including those who aren’t medical providers but perform services such as transportation or language interpretation for patients. Also included in the first wave are “medically vulnerable” residents of skilled-nursing, assisted-living and long-term care facilities.

At the same time, the guidelines say hospitals and other facilities can vaccinate “to persons in lower priority groups” if doses are on the verge of expiring.

Noymer said vaccines arrive in highly concentrated solutions, which are then reconstituted with saline before injected. Each vial contains five or six doses, and if there are leftover doses they must be used within six hours.

“You have six hours to use that or lose that,” he said.

This story was originally published December 30, 2020 at 5:00 AM.