COVID vaccine updates: J&J shipments reportedly on hold in California and across U.S.
Sacramento County will soon offer shots of the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine using a mobile clinic, a strategy several health offices in California have considered to make the most of its single-dose nature.
The Sacramento Fire Department announced that in partnership with the county health office, it has “created a mobile unit to bring (the J&J vaccine) to communities with limited access.”
The mobile unit will deploy to the Neighborhood Wellness Foundation Community Center on Clay Street in Sacramento on Thursday afternoon for a clinic offering 200 shots.
No appointment will be necessary, according to an agency news release. The shots will be given first-come first-serve, but only to eligible groups within Sacramento County — those over age 65, law enforcement, emergency services, teachers, child care workers and food and agriculture workers.
Those who want to receive a shot must show proof of employment or appropriate identification showing age.
Those 200 shots are among 5,500 the local health office was set to receive from J&J this week, according to a Tuesday presentation during a Board of Supervisors meeting. Others are being administered at a midtown clinic.
However, providers across the U.S. are now reporting a dearth of J&J vaccine shipments due to a manufacturing issue.
Reuters reported Tuesday that no new J&J doses will be delivered in the U.S. this week and that the company may not resume shipments until late March. The Los Angeles Times reported Tuesday that Los Angeles County’s health office says it expects to receive no J&J vaccine doses the next two weeks.
Johnson & Johnson had pledged to deliver 20 million doses to U.S. providers before the end of March. Through Tuesday it had only delivered about 3.6 million, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Providers at the local level continue to have questions regarding other aspects of the state’s rollout and allocation strategies.
Sacramento County officials during Tuesday’s meeting alleged the health office still isn’t getting its fair share of vaccine supply, as shifts in focus toward farmworkers and low-income groups have caused allocations to fluctuate. Sutter Health, which serves 22 counties across Northern California including the Sacramento region, recently had to reschedule 21,000 second-dose appointments due to limited and unpredictable supply totals coming from the state.
Vaccine supply continues to increase week to week at the statewide level but remains limited as a key date approaches. Starting next Monday, health offices and hospital systems are supposed to open eligibility to residents ages 16 through 64 who have a number of qualifying medical conditions, California Department of Public Health guidelines say.
County health officer Dr. Olivia Kasirye said Tuesday the eligibility change will be a “large increase” that will further extend demand above current supply levels.
CDC releases next week’s allocations for states. Where’s J&J?
The CDC on Tuesday released California’s state-level supply allocations for the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, but not for J&J, for next week.
The state is slated to receive 1.66 million total doses of Pfizer and Moderna next week: about 516,000 first doses and 383,000 second doses of Pfizer, plus 380,000 first doses and 380,000 second doses of Moderna.
That’s an increase of a little more than 200,000 compared to this week from the two manufacturers. Pfizer’s second-dose allocation increased by roughly 140,000 and the Pfizer first-dose and Moderna second-dose allocations each increased by about 30,000.
No allocation numbers were released this week for the J&J vaccine, likely due to the supply issue.
California vaccinations by the numbers
CDPH on its online vaccine data tracker reported Wednesday providers have administered 10,772,859 doses to date, up 144,287 over Tuesday’s total.
The state reported only about 116,000 doses administered in Tuesday’s update. CDPH said both days totals are undercounts due to a “data processing latency” issue, and that a more accurate total will be provided later this week.
The CDC on its data webpage reports a higher cumulative total for California of just over 11 million doses. The CDC says this includes about 7.5 million people who are partially vaccinated, or 25% of California’s adult population, and about 3.5 million who are fully vaccinated, or 11%.
According to CDPH, providers across California have been delivered about 14.7 million vaccines. Close to 460,000 additional doses have been shipped by manufacturers but have not yet arrived.
California health officials will change the standards for assignments in the color-coded, four-tier reopening framework once 2 million doses have been administered in the bottom 25% of ZIP codes according to the state’s “Healthy Places Index,” which measures poverty rates and other indicators of availability and quality of health care.
That bottom quartile as of Wednesday’s update had received 1,926,968 doses, up about 30,000 from Tuesday. Gov. Gavin Newsom in a news conference says he expects the state to reach 2 million by Friday.
How many doses have been given across Sacramento area?
These are the totals for combined first and second doses, administered through Tuesday, as reported by the state public health department, by recipient county of residence.
▪ Sacramento: 349,778 (22,308 doses per 100,000 residents)
▪ El Dorado: 50,907 (26,363 doses per 100,000)
▪ Placer: 129,125 (32,246 doses per 100,000)
▪ Yolo: 64,789 (28,974 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 offered 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 walk-thru clinics at California Northstate University in Elk Grove and at Sacramento State.
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 is offering Pfizer and Moderna clinics Monday through Thursday this week 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 were 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 last Friday that it 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 and in recent weeks projected it could vaccinate 18,300 more by the end of this week, 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 10, 2021 at 11:26 AM.
