Sutter Health rescheduling COVID vaccine appointments, but still needs 30,000 doses
Sutter Health says the state has allocated about 30,000 COVID-19 vaccine doses each of the next two weeks to the provider, representing two-thirds of the 90,000 second-dose appointments it recently began to cancel or reschedule.
The Northern California health system in the past week had begun notifying patients with appointments scheduled through next Tuesday for a follow-up dose of Pfizer or Moderna those appointments would need to be canceled due to “extremely limited and unpredictable” supply allotments from the state.
Sutter Health told patients it would call them in seven to 10 days to reschedule those canceled appointments.
“Because the first portion of the state-allocated vaccine supply won’t arrive until mid-next week, most patients will still need to be rescheduled,” Sutter said in an emailed statement Thursday evening. “We are in the process now of calling and emailing these patients directly to reschedule.”
The provider said earlier this week it would have to “indefinitely postpone” as many as 90,000 second-dose appointments if the state did not step in to boost supply.
“While these allocations are a step in the right direction, they are only a partial fulfillment of the commitment the state has made to assure second doses,” Sutter said in its statement. “We are hopeful the state will provide the additional 30,000 so we can bring back all of our patients for their second dose of the vaccine within the CDC’s recommended timeframe.”
U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidance say the second dose of either of the authorized two-dose vaccines — Pfizer, which is supposed to be taken three weeks apart, and Moderna, intended for four weeks apart — can safely come six weeks after the first jab without losing their effectiveness.
The state has not publicly released allocation totals for vaccine providers, which consist mainly of hospital systems and counties’ local health offices.
CDPH spokesman Darrel Ng told The Bee earlier this week that Sutter Health’s appointment cancellations are not related to Blue Shield taking over as the state’s third-party administrator of its vaccination program.
Sutter Health said in its statement it “continues to work with the state and Blue Shield to obtain additional vaccine.”
Sutter Health first had to suspend its booking of new first-dose appointments in early February, only about a week after opening eligibility to patients ages 65 and older, due to scarce supply. First-dose scheduling has not yet resumed due to the supply issue.
CDPH in the past few weeks has announced numerous changes to allocation guidelines.
Additionally, starting March 1, the state required 10% of doses to be set aside for education and child care workers. And on March 15, the state says the vaccine will be available to adults under age 65 who are vulnerable on the basis of medical conditions.
“Targeting a scarce resource to certain ZIP codes, certain communities, certain eligible populations is going to mean that some communities don’t get as much as others,” Dr. Mark Ghaly, state Health and Human Services Secretary, said on a call Thursday morning with reporters.
Even as California and nationwide supply totals have ramped up considerably in recent weeks, individual providers have faced issues throughout the rollout. Sacramento County, the city of Los Angeles and Kaiser Permanente in Northern California have each at varying points this year expressed concerns that their vaccine supply was either unacceptably low or had dropped significantly one week compared to previous weeks, without warning or explanation from the state.
This story was originally published March 5, 2021 at 7:12 AM.
