UC Health patient-care teams administer 1 million COVID-19 vaccines since December
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The leader of University of California Health reported Monday that a UC team of patient-care and support personnel now has administered more than 1 million doses of the COVID-19 vaccines, rapidly moving from immunizing their own staff to serving people around the state.
“We’ve been in a race between the spread of the virus and the pace of vaccination since the moment the first shipment of vaccine arrived in mid-December. Our goal was and is clear – get shots into the arms of Californians as quickly as possible, beginning with those at the highest risk of exposure and serious illness,” said Dr. Carrie L. Byington, an infectious disease expert and executive vice president of UCH. “The million-shot milestone is symbolically meaningful and an event to celebrate with all of our employees, students, and trainees. There isn’t a moment to rest because the pandemic is not over.”
COVID-19 has killed more than 60,000 Californians, Byington said, and even as the UC’s six academic health centers were treating thousands of patients with serious cases of the respiratory disease caused by the coronavirus, the leadership teams were simultaneously identifying and deploying teams to get the vaccines distributed.
The vaccination drive required “the equivalent of 130 employees working full time for 16 weeks,” noted UC Health leaders, and that does not include the logistical, IT and administrative personnel involved in the effort.
The UC began in December by vaccinating their own patient-care personnel: doctors, nurses and respiratory therapists, as well as those in housekeeping, maintenance and patient transport, among them. Roughly 91% of UC’s patient care have taken the vaccine. Along with employees, more than 782,000 people have received shots through UC Health.
By January, though, UC San Diego Health CEO Patty Maysent and her team opened a drive-thru vaccination center at Petco Park, where they gave shots to health care workers from other hospitals and health facilities. The site, home of Major League Baseball’s San Diego Padres, would quickly become the site of a mass vaccination drive, immunizing more than 200,000 people.
Other UCH academic health centers, including the Sacramento region’s UC Davis Health, began partnering with community groups and public health departments to provide education, testing and vaccinations to high-risk communities.
“It has been, and will continue to be, a team effort,” Byington said. “I could not be more proud of all the people across UC who are rising to meet every challenge and working to end the pandemic.”
