Gavin Newsom announced on Tuesday that California will make changes to a program designed to address inequalities in the distribution of the COVID-19 vaccine, after a Times report discovered evidence that outsiders were abusing the program for appointments. to take what is reserved for residents of neighborhoods hardest hit by the pandemic.
“We do not like to see the abuse,” Newsom said at a news conference in Sacramento.
The program to improve access to vaccines in color communities relies on special codes that enable people to make appointments on the My Turn Vaccination Schedule website. The codes are provided to community organizations to distribute to people in largely black and Latino communities.
But the codes also spread in group texts and messages among the richer work-from-home in Los Angeles who, according to state rules, are not yet eligible for the vaccine. Many of them were under 65.
Newsom did not provide details on what changes will be made to the program, but said the state would move away from the group code system.
The governor said the codes were also abused during a mobile vaccination clinic held at the Ramona Gardens public housing development in Boyle Heights on Saturday, where Newsom and other elected leaders attended.
Newsom said it was “fairly clear on the public housing premises that not everyone comes from the community.” The state then discovered that a group code used to make appointments was more widely shared so that those outside the community could make appointments successfully.
“We work through things and correct for them,” Newsom said.
Early last week, California opened two new mass vaccination sites with the Biden-Harris administration, with one located at Cal State Los Angeles and the other at the Oakland Coliseum. The sites were intended to vaccinate individuals in two of the most severely affected communities as part of a first-in-the-country federal partnership aimed at a fairer vaccination process. These sites are also linked to mobile vaccination units that are intended to bring vaccines directly to communities or workplaces that would otherwise struggle to access them.
As part of the approach, the state has set aside blocks of appointments in both areas specifically for the people most affected. Special access codes were given to local organizations, who were then asked to distribute the codes to community members to make their appointments. As The Times has learned, these codes have spread widely in the wider LA community, allowing quite a few people who would otherwise not be eligible to be vaccinated on the Cal State LA website.
Brian Ferguson, a spokesman for the Governors’ Office for Emergency Services, said he did not immediately have details on what the new vaccine registration system would look like.