California’s Blue Shield will create an algorithm to determine where COVID-19 vaccines should be given across the country, with the goal of being able to deliver 3 million shots a week by March 1, according to a contract released Monday is and which provides the insurance giant far-reaching. powers to oversee the distribution of doses by the state.
The company will try to drastically increase the number of daily doses, but the goal depends largely on the supply sent to the state. California has received just over 1 million doses of vaccines from the federal government in the past week.
Blue Shield, which exerts a major influence in state policy, will work immediately to centralize the state’s COVID-19 vaccination program after a slow start due to a lack of available doses, complicated regulations that determine which Californians should prioritized and problems with data reporting.
The contract states that Blue Shield’s algorithm will prioritize the distribution of vaccines with a ‘focus on equity’ throughout the state and will be updated based on vaccine availability and COVID-19 rates. Few other details about the algorithm were available Monday.
Under the contract, Blue Shield also has a wide range to choose which healthcare providers and provinces in California will receive and administer doses as part of a vaccine network.
“We are changing a process in the middlestream and my hope is that it will become easier and no longer bureaucratic and it will be difficult for clinics in my community to serve their client populations,” Holly Mitchell, supervisor from LA County, said Monday in a interview said. ‘This is not the solution LA County needs. LA County needs more vaccine and the flexibility to distribute it more fairly. ”
The state’s decision to put Blue Shield at the helm removes the most important decision-making process regarding the administration of vaccines among the provinces, just as California’s vaccination efforts began to take off. More than 6 million doses have been administered in the state, with California averaging one million vaccines a week, Govin Newsom, governor, said in a tweet on Monday.
Kaiser Permanente, which provides health care services to more than 9 million California residents, is expected to sign a separate contract with the state to run a vaccination program for its members, while overseeing two or more mass vaccination sites and helping to vaccinate ‘difficult to achieve’. and affect populations disproportionately, ”according to a letter of intent released on January 29.
Both companies agreed that they would execute the programs at or near cost and, according to the letters of intent, would ‘not benefit’. Blue Shield’s contract stipulates that the company cannot charge the state more than $ 15 million for the cost of the bag.
Newsom, who has been criticized for the slow rollout of the state, said the arrangement with Blue Shield and Kaiser would ensure that vaccines are administered faster and more equitably, while improving the reliability of data that has been problematic so far. But some provincial officials say the process has been delayed by a shortage of vaccines and have noted that state data are failing to accurately show their progress in administering shots.
“This is a supply problem, not a logistical problem,” said Buddy Mendes, a member of the Fresno County Board of Supervisors and a vice president of California’s urban provinces. ‘Give us the doses, that’s all we’re asking for. We’ll get it in people’s arms. ”
The Urban Counties of California wrote to Newsom on February 3 to “raise serious concerns” about the agreement with Blue Shield and asked why the state would bring the company into the process so late after provinces spent significant sums of money to rush . vaccine distribution. The agreement with Blue Shield, the group writes, could create confusion in the supply chain and disrupt the systems created by local governments.
“Our main concern is to ensure that we have sufficient vaccines to cover appointments at our large-scale vaccination sites,” the letter reads.
Ventura County officials have asked the state to exclude the Blue Shield agreement option, saying its own vaccination program is limited only by the lack of available doses. Officials said Ventura County could increase its ability to administer 8,000 doses a day if adequate vaccine is provided. Allowing Blue Shield to determine how many doses a country receives puts the efforts in limbo, the country wrote. The contract issued on Monday did not allow the provinces to sign out.
“All of this capability and capacity would come to a standstill if the vaccine supply was diverted or reduced,” wrote Linda Parks, chair of the board of supervisors, and Michael Powers, the country’s executive.
The contract will create a vaccine network in three ‘geographical waves’, although the areas and timelines for the plan have not been included in the contract. Sources gave The Times a preliminary timeline confirmed by the California Department of Public Health, in which Central Valley provinces such as Fresno, Kern, San Joaquin and Stanislaus are in the first wave starting on February 21st.
Los Angeles, Orange, San Bernardino, San Diego and Ventura are among the provinces in the second wave starting on March 7. A week later, San Francisco, Contra Costa and Alameda were among the counties that would begin participating in the network of vaccine providers. .
Newsom approved the agreement with Blue Shield and Kaiser under an emergency contract that does not require legal approval. The governor announced the deal late last month, but the contract was only signed on Friday. The contract terms last until 31 December.
The announcement that Blue Shield would play another important role in the state’s pandemic response sparked a new round of criticism over the close ties between the company and Newsom.
The Oakland company, which serves about 4 million California residents, was leveraged in April to improve coronavirus testing. state’s disastrous start, which includes a shortage of test stock, long waiting times for results and errors in the data.
The company’s CEO, Paul Markovich, served as co-chair of the governor’s test task, while some of the company’s employees also worked on the effort.
Blue Shield is a prominent player in political campaigns in California and spent more than $ 1 million in support of Newsom’s campaign for governor in 2018 and nearly $ 1.3 million on government lobbying in the most recent legislative session. In January 2020, Blue Shield donated $ 20 million to support Newsom’s homelessness program.
Newsom said on February 3 that linking Blue Shield and political influence to the company that landed the vaccination contract was ‘nonsense’.
“Everyone came together to see what works, what doesn’t work, and we identified two partners in particular, two non-profit organizations, Kaiser and Blue Shield,” Newsom said. “… They have the kind of scale, they have the capacity, they have the mindset we were looking for.”
Times My Sacramento head John Myers contributed to this report.