Santa Clara County has provided excess vaccine doses to a top official and dozens of other non-health workers over the past month, raising new questions about providers’ discretion to vaccinate lower-priority people amid a chaotic direct implementation .
Although Santa Clara County is not the only provider experiencing the problem, it increases the choice especially because the province at the same time takes a hard line against other providers who deviate from normal protocols, and recently cut the vaccine to Good Samaritan Hospital. it vaccinated teachers in Los Gatos improperly.
Since January 11, the country has been relying on a written plan explaining what to do with excess vaccine, which should be used immediately as soon as it begins to thaw. This requires that you first offer the vaccine to those in Phase 1A, the highest priority, followed by those 75 years and older, and then transport the vaccines to Valley Specialty Center at the VMC or Saint Louise Regional Hospital.
As provinces across the state try to ethically manage extra daily doses in the context of an overall deficit, it seems that the protocol leaves room for what happens next. At least twice, fast-thawed vaccines have landed in the arms of provincial employees who are considered part of Phase 1B, including James Williams and others who do not regularly come face-to-face with coronavirus patients. Some of these employees, including Williams, are also much younger than those who are now prioritized before vaccination.
The largest group was vaccinated on Dec. 30, nearly two weeks before the province set written rules for extra doses, when CEO Jeff Smith authorized about 45 provincial employees working in the province’s emergency operations center to receive vaccines that, according to the province was otherwise on its way to the garbage.
According to state guidelines, health care workers and those living in phase 1A long-term care facilities are prioritized, followed by those over 65, educators, food and agriculture workers, and phase 1B emergencies, of which EOC employees are a part.
‘These are by definition not slots that are known in advance. These are not appointments, which were one day unique in that they were a much larger number, ‘says Williams, who is in his late 30s. “We usually talk about onesies, twosies or maybe a dozen.”
On Dec. 30 at about 4 p.m., Smith said he received a call that Valley Medical Center Medical Center has a number of unused doses of Pfizer and that no higher-priority health care worker needs them. With about 90 minutes to administer the doses, Smith allowed those who were physically in San Jose headquarters, including Williams, clerical workers, analysts and other support staff, to receive the first dose in the afternoon. Williams said he was one of the “very last people in line”.
At that time, about 6,000 provincial health care workers and support staff nationwide were vaccinated.
“There was not an available group of people in the hospital, and emergency room staff seemed reasonable to me,” Smith said. “My thinking process was, ‘Well, if there are no doctors and nurses and technologists available, we should go to emergency services. ‘”
The state’s information guidelines from December give suppliers a degree of discretion on the priority list when vaccines are about to expire or people do not show up for appointments. According to departmental health departments, the prioritization can “temporarily adjust” only after “intensive and appropriate efforts to reach the groups that were prioritized at that moment”, which did not respond to a request for comment on Friday.
How exactly these scenarios unfold in reality, however, has caused confusion and heated debate. Last week, the country approved the Good Samaritan Hospital because, according to the hospital, it offered excess vaccines to teachers – also under the Phase 1B grouping. The province claims that the hospital’s actions contain a “problematic” series of events in which teachers are offered vaccines at future dates, not just excess vaccine.
Phase 1B farm workers only received vaccines on the day they were available and excluded only other options, Smith and Williams said.
In another case on January 12, Deputy Director of Emergency Management David Flamm warned emergency personnel, public health staff and other 1B employees of a registration link to sign up for same-day appointments “approved by provincial leadership”, according to the email obtained by this news organization.
Flamm said Friday it is the only time he has been asked to send out such an email, and it appears the vaccines are accessible in several areas. “DO NOT PROGRESS !!!!!” the email told recipients, “If you can not vaccinate today, we expect there will be additional days within the next few weeks when this opportunity may occur.”
“While all the vaccinations are going on, it seems to me that there is always a delta between those being administered and cancellations, or any other number of problems, so I just expected it to happen again,” Flamm said. said.
In total, there were “at least a few” cases of 1B workers receiving vaccines in addition to the Dec. 30 group, but with far fewer numbers, Smith said.
‘We were in a situation where there was a shortage of vaccines, a challenge to interpret the state rules, a lot of people wanting the vaccine – and we tried and still try to focus on healthcare first. professionals and emergencies, ”Smith said. “This is a situation that is being used or lost.”