Sacramento got no COVID vaccines last week due to storms. What it means for appointments
Sacramento County health officials on Monday revealed the county did not get any of its expected vaccine doses last week due to storms that interrupted the nation’s vaccine supply chain, forcing clinics to cancel thousands of appointments over the weekend.
Placer County officials also report they are running out of doses and have not yet scheduled clinics this week past Tuesday.
And several local health care systems that get direct shipments separate from counties’ allocations said they also had to cut back on vaccinations as their supplies ran thin. That includes Sutter Health, which reports it is not currently accepting appointments for first-dose shots and is postponing some second-dose appointments. UC Davis Health, operator of the UC Medical Center in Sacramento, which reports it may have to temporarily stop giving shots as well this week.
As of Monday, the county’s large Cal Expo site remained open, but only to offer the last few available doses for people who were scheduled for a second shot.
But Sacramento County health officials say they have been told they may be getting renewed shipments as early as Tuesday, and are expecting to get two weeks worth of doses this week, totaling 34,000 doses.
That will pose another challenge to local health officials and their private partners. The county-sponsored clinics likely will be called upon in the next few days to set up twice as many appointments as usual, and handle twice as many patients for vaccines.
Sacramento County Health Officer Dr. Olivia Kasirye said officials were awaiting word Monday on when the first shipments will arrive, and have alerted their clinics and private partners to be ready to ramp back up immediately.
“We’re just waiting until we confirm the shipments,” she said. “It might show up as early as tomorrow. We expect to have a lot more doses this week.”
State health officials have told counties to move quickly to get the next round of doses quickly into people’s arms.
“We need to be able to use up vaccines so they aren’t sitting around,” Kasirye said. “We have the capacity. The challenge is the planning. It is happening so suddenly. You do not have time to plan.
“We will meet the challenge, working with our partners. We’ll get it done.”
The focus in Sacramento and most other counties will continue to be on people age 65 and up, and on teachers and others in the education realm. Kasirye said Sacramento, as of last week, was ahead of the state’s new mandate that 10% of vaccines go to teachers.
Some other entities that conduct vaccines in the Sacramento area were forced to scale back as well last week.
In El Dorado County, officials said Marshall Hospital was forced to cancel a clinic, but got new doses Monday morning and is rescheduling people for their shots. El Dorado County officials did not cancel clinics over the weekend, but reduced vaccinations and moved doses around the county.
Placer County officials report limited vaccine as well, saying they schedule second-dose only clinics Monday and Tuesday, and have not yet scheduled any clinics for the rest of the week, but hope the situation improves soon. First-dose appointments this week are postponed, with no makeup dates yet announced.
“We did receive a shipping notification today so hope to be able to open up additional appointments soon,” Placer spokeswoman Katie Combs Prichard said.
Yolo County spokeswoman Jenny Tan said in a video briefing Monday morning that the county held large clinics Friday and Saturday as planned, but won’t be able to share dates for this week’s clinics until last week’s delayed doses arrive, likely by Tuesday.
Tan urged Yolo residents to check back in with the county’s website and social media pages frequently for information on clinics, which will be hosted on shorter notice this week, announced as soon as the vials arrive.
“Second dose appointments will not be impacted,” Yolo County’s vaccination webpage says.
Sutter Health reported on Monday it did not receive some doses that supposedly were en route to California, forcing it to stop scheduling appointments.
“Because of this delay, we are rescheduling Moderna second-dose vaccine appointments for some patients,” Sutter said in an email to The Sacramento Bee. “Additionally, due to ongoing supply issues from the state, our capacity to schedule new vaccination appointments is constrained.
“At this time Sutter Health has paused scheduling new first-dose appointments for COVID-19 vaccination due to a lack of vaccine supply. As soon as more vaccine is made available to us, we will reopen appointments.”
Kaiser Permanente in Sacramento reports it is receiving shipments on Monday that were delayed last week, but it has not had to cancel appointments.
UC Davis Health reported it is suffering shortages and may run out of supply this week.
“Vaccine supply has been relatively low, so we’re currently vaccinating about 800 people per day and may be on track to exhaust our current vaccine supply this week,” UC Davis Health said in a statement to The Bee. “If needed, we will reschedule appointments.
“If we had more supply, we could be vaccinating up to 3,000 people per day, including people in at-risk occupations. The vaccine supply is unpredictable, as usual, and we don’t know if that unpredictability is due to the weather or other reasons.”
Update on California COVID vaccines
Storms have cleared and shipments are resuming. A state data dashboard updated Monday morning shows more than 1 million doses as heading to providers but not yet having arrived.
The California Department of Public Health on its online vaccine data tracker reported Monday providers have administered 7,437,925 doses. The total for doses injected has grown by 507,949 since Friday, an average of about 169,000 shots per day.
Daily updates to the CDPH dashboard show the number of doses reported as being shipped to California providers increased 4,300 last Thursday and by zero last Friday, compared to 203,000 and 144,000 the preceding Thursday and Friday, respectively, suggesting that weather delays ground supply flow to a halt for at least two days.
Then, about 1 million doses were reported as being shipped over the weekend: 406,000 on Saturday followed by 593,000 on Sunday. None of those are marked as yet being “delivered,” meaning those roughly 1 million doses were still en route as of 11:59 p.m. Sunday, according to CDPH.
Federal allocation data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had shown California as set to receive about 1.1 million total doses of vaccine last week and 1.25 million this week. It’s unclear how the weather delays may impact those figures.
Two major priority changes have been announced for March. As Kasirye alluded to, California on March 1 will begin dedicating 10% of its vaccine supply to education and child care workers. And starting March 15, the state will open eligibility to those ages 16 to 64 who have high-risk health conditions including but not limited to cancer, heart conditions, severe obesity, Type 2 diabetes and pregnancy.
The state public health numbers don’t distinguish between first and second doses. According to CDC data, just over 5.5 million people have received at least one dose in California, which means close to 14% of the state’s 40 million residents are at least partially vaccinated. About 2.05 million, more than 5% of the state’s population, are fully vaccinated.
The COVID-19 vaccines currently available require two shots. Pfizer’s shots should be taken three weeks apart and Moderna’s four weeks apart. CDPH and the CDC each advise that the timeline can be stretched to a maximum of six weeks, if administering the shots on schedule is “not feasible.”
Here is the latest on vaccine distribution in the Sacramento area:
How many doses have been given across Sacramento area?
These are the totals for combined first and second doses, administered through Sunday, as reported by the state public health department, by recipient county of residence.
▪ Sacramento: 252,829 (16,125 doses per 100,000 residents)
▪ El Dorado: 36,519 (18,912 doses per 100,000)
▪ Placer: 95,854 (23,938 doses per 100,000)
▪ Yolo: 44,574 (19,934 doses per 100,000)
Local officials, including Yolo County health officer Dr. Aimee Sisson, have cautioned these may represent undercounts of the true number of shots that have been administered, due to data reporting delays and other issues.
Sacramento-area health offices, public clinics and pharmacies
Aside from last week’s weather issue, health departments in the capital region report receiving several thousand doses of Pfizer and Moderna vaccines on a weekly basis, according to each county.
Most county health offices are splitting their direct allocations between their own county-run clinics, non-chain hospitals and other partners, including some Safeway pharmacies.
Counties with little or no presence from major hospital systems such as Sutter Health or Kaiser Permanente may get larger direct allocations relative to their populations, which are then distributed to smaller hospital systems.
In the past few days, CVS and Rite Aid have begun offering vaccine appointments at some of their pharmacies across California, including some in Sacramento, El Dorado and Placer counties, as part of a federal retail pharmacy partnership.
Sacramento
▪ Phase: 1A (front-line health workers; long-term care residents) and early stages of 1B (adults 65 and older; essential workers in some sectors)
▪ Received directly: Not reported; county awaiting state data update, according to local health office
▪ Administered: 219,754. Of those, 173,237 were administered to Sacramento County residents: 123,629 first doses and 47,947 second doses.
The local health department says Sacramento County is now vaccinating education and child care workers along with law enforcement, emergency services and residents 65 and older. The county is not yet vaccinating food and agriculture workers.
The county is offering vaccine appointments at two clinics for those in eligible groups at the Sacramento State campus and at California Northstate University in Elk Grove. The county is also partnering with Safeway pharmacies, and some CVS and Rite Aid stores are offering shots in partnership with the federal program.
The university clinics offer the Pfizer vaccine, meaning a three-week wait between doses; Safeway, CVS and Rite Aid pharmacies are offering Moderna, a four-week wait.
Recipients must have an appointment before arriving. Appointment information can be found via the Sacramento County website at dhs.saccounty.net, and at the CVS and Rite Aid websites.
El Dorado
▪ Phase: 1A and first tier of 1B “with an emphasis on residents 75 and older”
▪ Received: 28,075 doses as of Feb. 11
▪ Administered: Approximately 22,000 doses (78% of received), according to the county website
El Dorado County says that it has one retail pharmacy participating in the federal program: the CVS store on Palmer Drive in Cameron Park. Appointments can be made through the CVS website or CVS pharmacy app.
Placer
▪ Phase: 1A; first tier of 1B “partially in progress”
▪ Received: Not updated since late January.
▪ Administered: Not updated since late January.
Placer County has not announced dates for first-dose clinics this week.
“New first dose appointments for the week of February 22 have been postponed due to weather-related vaccine shipment delays,” the county website reads.
According to the CVS website, there are stores participating in the federal vaccine partnership in Auburn and Rocklin. Appointments have also been made at Remedy RX Pharmacy in Roseville through a local partnership.
Information on county-run clinics and Safeway partners in Placer is available at placer.ca.gov/vaccineclinics.
Yolo
▪ Received: At least 15,800 total first and second doses, county spokeswoman Carolyn Jhajj said Feb. 11.
▪ Administered: 9,635 first doses and 6,204 second doses through last Thursday, county spokeswoman Tan said Monday.
Yolo announced last week it will begin distributing vaccine doses to Phase 1B essential workers including teachers and child care, emergency services and food and agriculture.
More details regarding county-run clinics are available on the county website at yolocounty.org.
Hospital systems
Hospital systems operating in multiple counties receive their own allocations from the state.
Sutter Health opened its appointments to those 65 or older earlier in February, opening centers in Sacramento and Roseville to vaccinate patients, but said a little less than a week before the weather supply issues that it had stopped booking those appointments due to lack of supply.
Sutter Health has administered more than 260,000 doses of vaccine to date to health care workers and patients ages 65 and older, spokeswoman Liz Madison said last Thursday.
Kaiser Permanente continues to focus initial inoculations on those ages 75 and older due to limited supply, according to its patient website. It is also beginning to reach out to people 65 and older who have high-risk conditions.
Kaiser Permanente in a weekend statement said it will receive 20% of California’s vaccine supply this week. The incoming supply boost will help expand appointments for those ages 65 to 74.
According to its website, Kaiser Permanente says it has administered about 345,000 of the 396,000 doses it has received at Northern California facilities, and has more than 145,000 future appointments scheduled.
Dignity Health’s Mercy Medical Group says it has vaccinated 9,375 patients to date and projects it can vaccinate another 18,300 more by March 14, supply pending.
“We are working on a plan for outreach to our patients with medical conditions qualifying them for vaccine in mid-March,” the provider says on its website.
UC Davis Health in a recent update to its website said it is beginning to collect information on employment for when it expands access to education, childcare, emergency services and food and agriculture workers. The provider says those groups will be “next” in accordance with state and federal health guidelines, but a precise timeline wasn’t given.
“Due to unpredictable vaccine supply, there’s a possibility your second dose could be delayed,” the UC Davis Health website says.
This story was originally published February 22, 2021 at 1:15 PM.
