Sacramento area scrambling for COVID-19 vaccine as California expands eligibility

Congratulations to Sacramento area residents 50 and older — you’re about to become eligible for COVID-19 vaccines.

Now be patient.

Gov. Gavin Newsom’s decision Thursday to expand vaccine eligibility opens the floodgates to millions of Californians between the ages of 50 and 64 who until now haven’t been in the queue. The decision takes effect April 1.

Yet supplies remain relatively tight.

Sacramento County, for example, is home to well over 200,000 residents in the 50-64 age group, according to U.S. Census data. That’s far more people than there are COVID-19 vaccines: The county announced Thursday that it expects to receive an allotment from the state next week of 25,130 doses.

“The limiting factor continues to be the limited amount of vaccine allocation. We administer all the doses we receive and will continue to plan appointment availability according to our weekly allocation,” said Brenda Bongiorno, a spokeswoman for the county’s health department.

The region’s hospital chains agreed that, regardless of eligibility rules, getting doses out to everyone who wants one has been difficult.

“We’ve had our challenges in our supply,” said Yessenia Anderson, spokeswoman for Dignity Health, which operates the Mercy hospital chain. “We’ve definitely run up against challenges, as many have.”

The bottleneck could worsen April 15, when the state will open eligibility to everyone 16 and older. That will make roughly 1 million Sacramento residents eligible.

County officials said they’re fairly confident supply allocations will increase in the coming weeks, but “we haven’t been given a guarantee,” said Rachel Allen, the county’s immunization program manager.

As it is, supply shortages have caused occasional but significant hiccups in vaccine distribution — notably when Sacramento-based Sutter Health had to postpone appointments for about 21,000 of its members across Northern California less than a month ago.

But in recent weeks supply allocations from the federal government have improved. California, which had been getting about 1.8 million doses a week, is now expected to get 2.1 million doses next week.

A Sutter spokesman said the healthcare giant will “continue to expand our eligibility in accordance with state guidance, but our ability to actually schedule appointments for patients remains dependent on supply. While our first-dose allocations remain low, we are hopeful that the significant volume of vaccine that California is receiving will positively impact Sutter’s allocation and enable us to fully utilize the capacity we’ve built to vaccinate more than 25,000 patients a day.”

So far nearly 550,000 residents of Sacramento County have received at least one dose of the vaccine, according to state data. The total for the four-county metropolitan region exceeds 900,000.

Kaiser Permanente said it “welcomes this broadening in vaccine eligibility and looks forward to the vaccine supply increasing as well, which will be needed to accommodate all who will now be eligible.

“We are currently administering more than 400,000 vaccine doses every week in California, and we can do even more — all we need are more vaccine doses.”

This story was originally published March 25, 2021 at 1:14 PM.