Questions and anxiety increase over the slow introduction of COVID-19 vaccine in San Diego

With an acupuncture, an elderly Chula Vista man was vaccinated against COVID-19 on December 21, and cheered and cheered from a room full of health workers.

Carlos Alegre has just become one of the first San Diegans to receive a vaccine that fights the new coronavirus, raising people’s hopes that the country and the country will emerge from the pandemic, perhaps by mid to late summer .

That hope still exists. But the rollout of vaccines did not begin quickly. A new variant of the virus helps to increase infections to record levels. And a boom to New Year’s Eve could make things worse this week and put larger San Diego’s overcrowded hospitals in a state of crisis.

The situation raises a lot of public anxiety and many, many questions, some of which are answered here.

How many of San Diego County’s 3.4 million people received a COVID-19 vaccine?

Nobody gave an exact version. A country spokesman said Friday that 58,000 people had been vaccinated. But that can be an underestimation due to delays in reporting. And the figure does not include residents of nursing homes vaccinated by CVS and Walgreens at those facilities. The pharmacies are leading a national vaccination effort that will involve more than 90 percent of the long-term care facilities in California.

The total vaccination rate also does not include the military community of San Diego County, which is among the largest in the United States. The navy vaccinated many front workers and personnel and began activating some of more than 105,000 people in the uniform. province. But for security reasons, the Navy does not disclose the number of people vaccinated so far. The VA San Diego Healthcare System immunized nearly 3,100 people.

It is also unclear how many total doses of vaccine have been delivered to the country, hospitals, the military and other parties involved in the immunization of humans. Nobody pulls the data together and puts it in public – although it may change.

“If we have the data, we will share the data,” said Nathan Fletcher, provincial supervisor. “We keep pushing. This is frustrating. Today we want to know exactly how many (doses) are here. ”

Is it possible to pull together such data?

This is done in many other places. The state of Indiana’s main website reports how many people received the first dose of a vaccine, the number who were fully vaccinated, and it is broken down by province, age, gender, and ethnicity. Ohio is doing something similar. So does UC San Diego. But California, despite its position as the center of the information technology universe, does not. Neither does San Diego County.

Is the vaccination going better in other parts of California and elsewhere in the US?

In general, no. About 2.3 million doses of vaccine have been distributed throughout California since Thursday, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Less than one in four doses (approximately 528,000) has been administered.

This reflects the situation countrywide. Leaders of Operation Warp Speed, the US government’s effort to accelerate vaccine development and distribution, said 20 million Americans would be vaccinated by the end of December. It is early January and about 6 million people have received a COVID-19 vaccine. That’s less than 2 percent of the country. By comparison, Israel has vaccinated more than 17 percent of its population, according to a database maintained by researchers at the University of Oxford.

The U.S. enactment started slowly for several reasons, including the fact that it started during the holidays and that the vaccines had to be kept in every cold temperature in every cold temperature.

It may improve soon. Dr Anthony Fauci, the country’s leading expert on infectious diseases, said vaccinations were accelerating and could soon reach 1 million doses a day.

UC San Diego Health said Thursday it is working with the province to immunize 5,000 people a day, which begins Monday.

Who was vaccinated during the first three weeks of implementation in San Diego County?

The focus falls almost entirely on health care workers and staff and residents of nursing homes. They fall into the group with the highest priority, known as Tier 1A. Several San Diego hospital systems – including UC San Diego Health, Sharp HealthCare and Rady Children’s have vaccinated the majority of their staff and started administering the second dose of vaccine, as both Pfizer and Modern vaccines need a boost shot. . CVS and Walgreens began the week of Dec. 28 with the administration of vaccines in San Diego’s nursing homes, although it is unclear how many people were vaccinated by this program.

How long will it take to vaccinate the people in the first group and who is eligible to be vaccinated next?

The province says it will take several weeks to finish with 1A. Then it moves to 1B, which focuses on older people and on essential workers who are more likely to be exposed to the virus – people like firefighters, police officers, grocery workers, bus drivers and teachers.

The next phase will focus strongly on people aged 75 and older – a very vulnerable demographic. As of Friday morning, 1,211 of the 1,738 people who died of COVID-19 in San Diego County were 70 years or older. The province houses about 200,000 people who are 75 years or older.

This group will also focus on educators and child care workers, as well as emergency service and food and agricultural workers.

Then things move on to Tier 2, which includes the nearly 275,000 people in the age group 65 to 74, along with hundreds of thousands of people in the transportation, industrial, commercial, residential, critical manufacturing and shelter facilities sectors.

Other states have already begun vaccinating some older residents outside of nursing homes and non-health care workers in Phase 1B, including Texas and Nebraska. There is actually no requirement that says that phase 1A must be completed in full before proceeding. In fact, the CDC’s vaccine advisory committee discussed how states can shoot one phase while another is turned off, and the state of California said vaccine doses that would otherwise be wasted could be administered to humans in the next phase.

Can people in 1B pre-register to get the vaccine?

Not yet, but believe at some point. “We will have (the function) before we get into Tier 1B,” said Nick Macchione, director of health and human services. A place where everyone can register and know when it’s their turn, that they’re being notified and where they need to go. ‘

Other locations, such as New Jersey and parts of Ohio, already allow people to pre-register for the vaccine.

The province said San Diegans, once eligible, will be able to be vaccinated by their existing providers of health care, local pharmacies, community clinics or vaccination sites run by the country.

Who comes next?

Group 1C contains the approximately 600,000 people in the age group 50 to 64, and people 16 to 64 who have an underlying health condition or disability, which increases their chances of severe COVID-19. Vaccinations also go to people who work in wastewater, defense, energy, chemical and hazardous substances, communications, IT, financial services and government operations.

Room officials prioritize who gets the vaccine first in these different sectors?

Yes. The CDC has recommended that vaccination be prioritized at each stage for individuals at greatest risk of exposure to the coronavirus or developing serious diseases. This was also true in phase 1A, and health workers who had the closest contact with COVID-19 patients were the first in hospitals to be vaccinated.

What if someone does not have a big risk, but that he is doing an important job? Would a 21-year-old person doing key repair work on a warship at a local defense company be vaccinated in front of a healthy 51-year-old accountant in the same firm?

So far, the state has not given a detailed explanation of how doses can be distributed outside phase 1A. And because demand is greater than supply, clear guidelines on how the vaccine is allocated fairly are the key to further chaos and confusion.

When will people who do not fit into one of these levels – the general public – be vaccinated?

According to the province, it will probably be spring, starting on March 20. But it is unclear what time in the spring the vaccinations begin.

How many people need to be vaccinated in the country and in the country to slow down the spread of the virus?

This is the big question, and CDC estimates range from 55 to 82 percent of the population need to be vaccinated or recover from natural infection to achieve herd immunity. Fauci said we may reach that point by summer, but we will know first, says Corinne McDaniels-Davidson, an epidemiologist at San Diego State University.

The advent of a new, more contagious strain of the coronavirus certainly does not help, as even more people will have to be vaccinated to control the pandemic.

“It’s going to take more time to reach the community immunity level,” McDaniels-Davidson said. “We are in a very devastating year, especially in the first six months, if things do not slow down.”