Sacramento County now taking ‘vaccine interest’ registrations for people age 65-plus

In an incremental advance, Sacramento County health officials are now taking COVID-19 vaccine requests for people age 65 and up, as well as for front-line workers in education, emergency response and food and agriculture.

But they warn that there are so many people in those groups that it may be months, based on current vaccine supplies, to set up appointments for everyone eligible for a vaccine to get one. The sign-up service is only for people living in Sacramento County, health officials said.

Sacramento so far has focused on vaccinating health care workers, first responders and residents at long-term care facilities since inoculations began in mid-December. The expansion of the local program comes two weeks after Gov. Gavin Newsom announced that people aged 65 and over were immediately eligible for shots.

Unprepared for that change, Sacramento and other counties were forced to announce they were not ready to accept people that young yet for inoculations due to lack of doses — even as some pharmacies, private health care systems and other counties began allowing some people 65-plus in for shots.

The Sacramento County health department reports it has been allotted 15,000 doses of the vaccine for use next week, officials said, higher than the 13,000 it received this week and the 6,600 the week before.

But those numbers are a drop in the bucket compared to the estimated 230,000 county residents who are eligible to get a vaccine under the state plan for the first two phases of the inoculation program over the next few months.

Not included in the county’s vaccine allocation estimates are separate weekly shipments sent directly to some local pharmacies and hospitals versus to the county health department.

Local health officials typically are told only days in advance how many doses they will get the following week, which they say hampers their long-range planning efforts.

The Biden administration announced this week, however, it intends to increase the number of doses being distributed nationally, a sign that local efforts may be able to ramp up operations in February.

So far, state data on Thursday show that 92,571 Sacramento County residents had been given a dose, including second doses. That means somewhere between 3.5 and 7% of eligible adult population in the county have been vaccinated, six weeks into the inoculation program.

▪ Some of those vaccinations have occurred at the county’s invitation-only Cal Expo site, which is still reserved for front-line health workers.

▪ Others have been done privately among elderly residents by Walgreens and CVS at skilled nursing facilities under a federal contract.

▪ Others have been conducted by regional hospital chains at their sites, focused first on healthcare employees, and then expanded to patient members of those health systems.

Regionally, state data show 36,304 inoculations in Placer County, 15,634 in Yolo County, and 11,732 in El Dorado County.

How to sign up in Sacramento County

The Sacramento County health department has set up an email and online sign-up site for people age 65 and older, as well as education workers and food and agriculture workers. The Sacramento County health department vaccine website includes separate sign up links for each group.

The county is calling it a “vaccination interest” list, found at the SacCounty COVID-19 Vaccine webpage. The public can also email COVIDVaccine@SacCounty.net or call the COVID-19 Hotline at 916-875-2400.

“With more vaccine supply, (county health) will use these lists for vaccination appointments of the prioritized groups in the future,” the county wrote in a statement.

Those shots are likely to be administered at various sites around the county, run by private clinics and nonprofit groups, as well as some school districts for their own employees.

County Health Officer Dr. Olivia Kasirye warned, however, that the county has already starting seeing a heavy load of residents emailing and applying online. Many will have to wait weeks to obtain an appointment, she said.

In addition, people from “up and down the state” have been signing up for the vaccine interest registration, according to county spokeswoman Brenda Bongiorno. On Friday, county officials will add a note to the webpage clarifying that the sign-up is restricted to people living in Sacramento County.

The county meanwhile has instructed its private partners, which include Safeway pharmacies, to focus first on the people who are age 65-plus who indicate they have underlying health conditions that put them at greater risk for a worse case of COVID-19.

That may mean healthy 65-year-olds who choose to go the county-run vaccination route, rather than through their own healthcare provider, could wait an undetermined amount of time before getting an appointment.

“A lot of people are emailing. If they don’t get a response right away, we ask them to be patient,” Kasirye said. “It is going to take us time to get through and find available appointments.”

The county hopes to open Cal Expo to larger groups as a mass drive-thru vaccination site. The county is set to begin contract talks with Curative on opening a second mass vaccination site somewhere in North Highlands, and a goal of opening a third major site in the future somewhere in south Sacramento.

At the same time, the county plans in the coming weeks to open “pop-up” vaccine sites in disadvantaged communities, if more shots are available, in line with state efforts to ensure a certain number of doses are reserved for equitable distribution.

Sacramento has also purchased two trucks to be retrofitted for cold storage, intended as mobile clinics to get vaccines out to agricultural sites and other places where residents lack cars or a nearby pharmacy. Those trucks likely will not be ready for service until March, Kasirye said.

This story was originally published January 29, 2021 at 5:00 AM.