COVID vaccine updates: Sacramento-area counties get their first single-dose J&J shots
California continues its mass vaccination campaign to combat the coronavirus pandemic, and is now doing so with three different vaccines at its disposal.
Counties in the capital region including Sacramento, Placer and El Dorado each recently reported receiving their first allotment of the new, single-dose COVID-19 vaccine from Johnson & Johnson.
Some counties are offering J&J at public clinics to all within the eligible priority groups. Others say they will target them toward at-risk populations for whom scheduling two appointments, as is necessary for the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, is not feasible or convenient.
The California Department of Public Health on its online vaccine data tracker reported Monday providers have administered 10,512,860 doses to date, up 508,918 since Friday for an average of about 170,000 shots per day.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Monday reported a higher cumulative total for California of just over 10.8 million. The CDC says this includes more than 7.3 million first doses and 3.4 million second doses.
That means about 24% of California’s adult population is at least partially vaccinated and 11% are fully vaccinated.
According to CDPH, providers across California have delivered a total of more than 13.3 million vaccines. Nearly 1.2 million additional doses have been shipped by manufacturers but have not yet arrived.
CDPH last week began providing more detailed information on how many vaccine doses have been administered in communities within the four quartiles of the state’s “Healthy Places Index,” which measures quality and accessibility of health care in the state’s ZIP codes.
State data from Monday showed about 18.2% of the statewide total has gone to the lowest HPI quartile, compared to 31.3% for the top quartile.
State health officials announced last week that California will begin allocating 40% of its vaccine supply to communities in this lowest HPI quartile, essentially doubling the amount targeted toward these groups.
CDPH also announced a change to the tier structure, which will loosen the threshold for all counties to move from the most restrictive purple tier into the red tier, that will take effect once California has injected 2 million total doses to residents in the lowest HPI quartile. With the tally for that quartile at about 1.87 million doses as of Monday, that will likely happen this week or early next week.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in new interim guidelines released Monday said it is OK for a fully vaccinated person — meaning two weeks or more after receiving their final dose — to gather indoors or outdoors with other fully vaccinated people, without need for social distancing or mask protocols.
Those who are fully vaccinated can also meet with unvaccinated people from a single household without masks or distancing, if those people are not within a high-risk group, according to the new guidelines.
New way to qualify for vaccination
Help give vaccines, and you can soon get a vaccine.
California on Friday launched the MyTurn Volunteer website. The program will let those who completes shifts of four hours or longer volunteering at a vaccination site become eligible to receive the COVID-19, pending clinic administrator approval.
The program will accept both medical and non-medical volunteers. The latter group would be assigned roles such as directing traffic or sanitizing surfaces.
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: 343,609 (21,914 doses per 100,000 residents)
▪ El Dorado: 50,126 (25,959 doses per 100,000)
▪ Placer: 127,163 (31,756 doses per 100,000)
▪ Yolo: 64,020 (28,630 doses per 100,000)
Figures may be undercounts due to data reporting delays.
Sacramento-area health offices, public clinics and pharmacies
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.
CVS, Rite Aid and Walgreens offer 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: 1B (adults 65 and older; essential workers in some sectors)
▪ Received directly: Not reported.
▪ Administered: 322,691 to Sacramento County residents through last Friday. Of those, 221,107 were first doses and 101,584 were second doses.
The county has announced a new clinic at Bayside Church in midtown on 19th Street, which will be operated by Safeway, with two dates this week.
The Bayside clinic will offer first doses of the Moderna vaccine Wednesday, with the second-dose clinic set for April 7.
On Thursday, it will offer the J&J single-dose vaccine. As of late Monday morning, Thursday’s clinic had 20 time slots still showing as available on its sign-up website.
Sacramento County continues to offer drive-thru vaccine clinics at McClellan Park and Natomas High School; and a walk-thru clinics at California Northstate University in Elk Grove.
All clinics require appointments in advance. Scheduling and booking information can be found at dhs.saccounty.net. Residents can sign up online for all except the Natomas High clinic; for that, residents must call 916-561-5253 on Mondays between 8 a.m. and 11 a.m. to make an appointment, according to the county.
The county is also partnered with 11 Safeway pharmacies.
The McClellan Park and Northstate clinics offer the Pfizer vaccine, meaning a three-week wait between doses. Safeway pharmacies offer Moderna, a four-week wait.
Sacramento County also has CVS, Rite Aid and Walgreens stores participating in the federal partnership program.
El Dorado
▪ Phase: 1B “with an emphasis on residents 75 and older”
▪ Received: 48,370 total doses.
▪ Administered: 47,618 doses as of Friday morning, according to the county website.
El Dorado health officials have not yet announced plans for where and when it’ll be administering its earliest allocation of J&J vaccine, but says on its website it received 1,100 doses of it late last week.
El Dorado announced a new pharmacy offering COVID-19 vaccines: Robinson’s, on Main Street in Placerville. Appointments can be made using CalVax, the state’s online vaccine registration system.
Walgreens in Cameron Park and the CVS store on Palmer Drive in Cameron Park are also now offering Moderna vaccine appointments as part of the federal retail pharmacy partnership. The county is also partnered with six Safeway stores and with Robinson’s, a pharmacy on Placerville’s Main Street.
The county last week announced new clinics for El Dorado residents ages 65 and older in the parking structure at Red Hawk Casino in Placerville on Thursdays, also available through CalVax.
More detailed information on county-run and county-partnered vaccine clinics can be found at edcgov.us/Government/hhsa/edccovid-19-clinics.
Placer
▪ Received: 78,370 through Feb. 28. Of those, roughly half were retained by the public health office while the remaining half were transferred to other health providers.
▪ Administered: Not broken down by provider, but Placer says county residents had received 75,981 first doses and 39,440 second doses through the end of February. These include those given at county-run clinics and by hospital systems.
Placer County said in a detailed monthly COVID-19 update last Friday that it expected to soon receive 1,400 doses of the J&J single-dose vaccine.
“The county plans to gradually implement mobile operations with J&J among at-risk populations where scheduling, transportation and other factors might otherwise be a barrier to a second appointment,” the report said.
Placer offers most of its county-run clinics at The Grounds, formerly the Placer County Fairgrounds, in Roseville. Appointments are required in advance.
The Grounds clinic is open for Placer County residents ages 65 and older as well as those in Phase 1A and 1B who are employed in Placer County.
Placer is also partnered with eight Safeway pharmacies throughout the county.
According to the CVS website, there are stores participating in the federal vaccine partnership in Auburn and Rocklin. There may also be availability at Rite Aid and Walgreens stores; users should check with individual stores for eligibility, the county says.
Appointments have also been made at Remedy RX Pharmacy in Roseville through a local partnership.
More information on county-run clinics and Safeway partners in Placer is available at placer.ca.gov/vaccineclinics.
Yolo
▪ Received: Not reported since early February.
▪ Administered: 13,482 first doses and 9,651 second doses through last Tuesday according to county spokeswoman Jenny Tan.
Yolo County reports that it has seven clinics set for this week. Four of them are fully private, while three are mostly private but may have “limited” public spaces left available, Tan said in a video update Monday morning.
Yolo’s private clinics will be Tuesday and Wednesday for agricultural workers; Wednesday for the incarcerated; and throughout the week for education workers.
The part-public, part-private clinics are for those 65 and older as well as child care, grocery and restaurant workers. Public links for appointments will likely be made available late Monday or early Tuesday, Tan said.
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 said in an update late Friday that it has secured 90,000 doses needed to reschedule second-dose appointments, with about 60,000 expected from the state this week and next while the remaining 30,000 have been given by counties’ health offices.
Those follow-up jabs are being rescheduled now, but the health system is still canceling first-dose appointments on a rolling basis and has paused booking news ones.
The provider opened appointments to its patients ages 65 and older for about a week in early February before supply issues forced new appointments to be suspended.
Kaiser Permanente is now vaccinating patients 65 and older, and recently started booking appointments for patients based on occupation. Essential workers in the fields of education, child care, food and agriculture, emergency services, health care and long-term care are all now eligible for shots via Kaiser.
In an update last week, Kaiser Permanente said it had administered about 520,000 of the 602,000 doses it has received at Northern California facilities, and has more than 230,000 future appointments scheduled.
UC Davis Health is also vaccinating “patients who work in education and childcare, emergency services, and food and agriculture” in line with the state’s Phase 1B guidelines, according to its website.
Dignity Health’s Mercy Medical Group says it has vaccinated at least 9,375 patients to date and projects it can vaccinate 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.
This story was originally published March 8, 2021 at 12:15 PM.
