Sacramento County says COVID vaccine supply still too low, below 2% of California total
As providers across California continue to administer well over a million COVID-19 vaccine doses a week, health officials are still contending that Sacramento County is not receiving as many vaccines as they believe it should from the state.
A chart shared by health officials Tuesday during a Board of Supervisors meeting showed that while this week’s allocation of 19,490 doses is the largest raw total given to the local health office, it’s also the smallest proportionally compared to the statewide supply dating back to at least late January.
For the weeks of Jan. 25, Feb. 1, Feb. 8 and Feb. 18, Sacramento County’s allocation ranged between 2.5% and 3% of California’s total vaccine distribution. The weeks of Feb. 22 and March 1, it got a little under 2% of the state total. This week, the county has been allotted just 1.65%.
The county makes up about 3.9% of California’s population, so the last three weeks’ totals represent less than half of what Sacramento would be receiving if allocations were based solely on number of residents.
The state allocation currently has a heavy focus on farmworkers, which Sacramento County has not yet begun vaccinating.
Allocations may change further, though, as the state targets 40% of its vaccine toward poorer neighborhoods. Sacramento County has a dozen ZIP codes that qualify for those doses, within the lowest quartile of the state’s “Healthy Places Index,” but local health officials don’t know how that compares with other counties.
Next week, the state also will open vaccines to a new group of recipients: those ages 16 to 64 with underlying medical conditions. That move will place a heavier burden on vaccination programs locally.
“That is a large increase,” county health officer Dr. Olivia Kasirye said during Tuesday’s meeting. “The limiting factor will be the amount of vaccine.”
Supervisor Phil Serna expressed concern that people will be disappointed and even angry if they can’t get a vaccine soon, given the Biden administration announcement that U.S. adult who wants a vaccine will be able to get one by the end of May.
The county’s nearly 20,000 doses arriving this week include about 8,200 from Pfizer, 5,800 from Moderna and 5,500 of the new single-dose vaccine from Johnson & Johnson.
Those figures refer only to direct allocations to Sacramento County’s local health office, and do not include vials received to private health systems providing the vaccine locally such as Kaiser Permanente, Sutter Health, UC Davis Health and Mercy Medical Group.
State data show Sacramento County lagging behind most neighboring counties and California as a whole in vaccination rate per capita. Sacramento has had about 22,000 doses given per 100,000 residents, 17% below the statewide rate and well below Placer County’s 32,000 shots per 100,000, Tuesday’s CDPH numbers show.
“The demand is much greater than the number of doses we are getting,” Kasirye said. “Our hope, especially with promises at the federal government level, there will be a marked increase in the number of doses available.”
California’s vaccination by the numbers
The California Department of Public Health on its online vaccine data tracker reported Tuesday providers have administered 10,628,572 doses to date, up 115,712 over Monday’s total.
That comparatively low daily total comes as CDPH, for a second straight week, says it is running into a “data processing latency” issue, and that the daily count for administered doses is incomplete. The data tracker will be updated with accurate numbers this week, the state says.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports a higher cumulative total for California of just over 10.9 million. The CDC says this includes more than 7.4 million first doses and 3.4 million second doses.
That means 24% of California’s adult population is at least partially vaccinated and 11% of its adults fully vaccinated.
According to CDPH, providers across California have been delivered about 14.5 million vaccines. About 210,000 additional doses have been shipped by manufacturers but have not yet arrived.
New tier list rule coming
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.
The tally in that quartile was just a few thousand short of 1.9 million as of Tuesday, up about 20,000 from Monday. It is unclear to what extent those totals may be undercounted due to the data reporting.
The change, which will be implemented retroactively, will see the cutoff for the case rate metric lifted from seven daily cases per 100,000 residents to 10 per 100,000.
This will impact the timelines for tier promotions of a dozen or more counties. Mono, Placer and Tuolumne, for instance, missed out on promotions to the red tier in this week, but came in below 10 cases per 100,000, so they may be promoted after the low quartile hits 2 million vaccine doses.
How many doses have been given across Sacramento area?
These are the totals for combined first and second doses, administered through Monday, as reported by the state public health department, by recipient county of residence.
▪ Sacramento: 346,345 (22,089 doses per 100,000 residents)
▪ El Dorado: 50,355 (26,077 doses per 100,000)
▪ Placer: 127,781 (31,911 doses per 100,000)
▪ Yolo: 64,306 (28,758 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.
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 recently announced that Robinson’s Pharmacy on Main Street in Placerville is taking appointments through 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.
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 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.
The county was offering Pfizer shots on Tuesday, plans to hold Moderna first-dose clinics Wednesday and Thursday and one for the J&J one-dose vaccine on Friday. More information on county-run clinics and Safeway partners in Placer is available at placer.ca.gov/vaccineclinics.
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.
Yolo
▪ Received: Not reported since early February.
▪ Administered: 13,482 first doses and 9,651 second doses through last Feb. 2 according to county spokeswoman Jenny Tan.
Yolo County says on its website it has seven clinics set for this week. Four of them are fully private, while partially public and partially private but have already been fully booked.
Yolo’s private clinics are 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.
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 expects to receive the 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 dedicated by counties’ health offices.
A Sutter spokeswoman said about 21,000 appointments had to be canceled and are being rescheduled now. 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.
Kaiser Permanente says on its website it is offering vaccines to Kaiser members as well as non-members
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 9, 2021 at 1:01 PM.
