State officials and local officials are starting to open mass vaccination centers to accelerate coronavirus vaccinations and to accommodate the millions of additional Californians who are eligible under the state’s new, looser guidelines.
Vaccination sites are already opening this week at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles, Petco Park in San Diego and Cal Expo in Sacramento, government Gavin Newsom said in a news conference on Monday. Some sites are also being opened in the Bay Area, but for now it is for health workers only and by appointment only. But they are ready to open to members of the wider public within the next few weeks.
The opening of mass vaccination clinics is the next phase of a historic vaccination campaign that began a month ago, when the first vaccines were injected into the arms of high-risk providers.
Since then, California has administered less than a third of the doses it has received from the federal government. It places California near the bottom of U.S. states for vaccination rates and puts great pressure on public health officials to speed up the process.
“We realize that the current strategy will not have to get us where we need to go so quickly,” Newsom said. “That’s why we’re speeding up the administration not only for priority groups, but also for opening large websites.”
According to the state, Sunday, the latest date on which data is available, has about 783,000 of the 2.9 million doses sent to California provinces and health care providers. This amounts to 1,981 doses per 100,000 people.
By comparison, South Dakota and West Virginia, which have the highest vaccination rates, administered 5,451 and 5,376 doses per 100,000 people, respectively, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Although many health workers can be vaccinated by their employer or health care provider, provincial officials hope the opening of additional sites can speed up the process. In addition, the Bay Area provinces expect the large-scale vaccination sites to begin immunizing people within a few weeks in the next group, Phase 1b, which includes about 15 million essential workers and people 65 and older in California.
The relaxed state guidelines, announced Thursday, allow provinces and health care providers to begin vaccinating people in phase 1b, as long as they have made vaccines available to everyone in phase 1a. However, many Bay Area provinces and suppliers are still working through Phase 1a and do not expect to start fully in Phase 1b until the end of January or early February.
In California, Phase 1a includes approximately 2.4 million health care workers and residents of long-term care facilities. Phase 1b, which the state has yet to complete, is likely to be divided into two levels. The first includes people working in education, emergency services and food and agriculture, plus people who are 75 years and older. The second level includes people working in critical manufacturing and transportation, plus people 65 and older and people homeless or locked up.
“In the next two weeks, we will vaccinate the first groups of people and vaccinate the next group,” said Dr. Ori Tzvieli, deputy health officer of Contra Costa County, said. ‘We are looking at people over 75 and essential workers, such as teachers, childcare staff, police and grocery workers. As more residents become eligible for vaccinations, healthcare providers will let their members and patients know how to get vaccinated. ”
The province announced Monday that it will begin offering a Safeway venue this week, and that additional Safeway and Rite Aid stores will join in the next two weeks. Contra Costa County did not want to specify the location of the Safeway because it currently only vaccinated Phase 1a health workers by appointment. The province is informing people who could possibly be vaccinated there.
Most residents in the country will be vaccinated by their own healthcare provider, not at a vaccination clinic in the country, Tzvieli said. Major healthcare providers, such as Kaiser Permanente and Sutter, will notify their patients when they are eligible to make vaccinations, he said. Notices are expected to start before the end of the month.
San Mateo County on Monday opened a center for mass vaccination at a site previously used for coronavirus testing. The San Mateo County Event Center Vaccination Clinic is currently for healthcare professionals only, who must sign up online for an appointment and fill out an attestation form to ask if they live in the country and work with patients in person and advise them not to share or send the link to others. Upon arrival, they will need to show a photo ID.
In San Francisco, where most residents have private or public health insurance, the Department of Public Health will help get vaccinations for the remaining vulnerable residents who are not covered. Public health officials said they would work with private providers such as Kaiser to open larger vaccination sites.
Santa Clara County is also vaccinating by appointment health workers who are not patients at the major health care systems. The company plans to open an additional website at El Camino Health, which is expected to begin online appointment planning on Tuesday and give shots next week.
Catherine Ho is a staff writer for the San Francisco Chronicle. Email: [email protected] Twitter: @ Kat_Ho