About 100,000 doses of COVID-19 vaccine are in freezers waiting to be administered in Santa Clara County, new data show.
Santa Clara is one of the first provinces to release COVID-19 data on how many doses each provider will use and how much will be used.
As of Thursday, of all the 280,000 doses received by providers, more than 96,000 remain unused.
While larger medical providers such as Stanford Health and Kaiser Permanente administered more than 70% of their doses, smaller providers appear to be struggling, the data show.
North East Medical Services (NEMS) in San Jose, specifically targeting underserved Asian communities, had the lowest injection rate, with only 12% of their doses. They waited almost 2000 doses.
Two other providers that also serve vulnerable minority populations also seem difficult. Asian American Community Involvement (AACI) administered 21% of the vaccine supply and there were more than a thousand doses left. Bay Area Community Health (BACH) administered 22% of its stock and nearly two thousand doses were unused.
“It was pretty crazy. There are also many vaccinations in our population, ”says Dr Kenneth Tai, chief medical officer of NEMS. Tai said his organization and other smaller providers and clinics face unique challenges facing some of the most vulnerable populations in our community.
“We literally got the vaccines last week. Only internally should our staff train how to do the questionnaire, how to do injections, etc. Most of them work overtime, ‘said dr. Tai said.
BACH sent an email to our investigation unit stating that the unused doses were due to:
- Extreme weather destroying some of their graft structures
- Many of their patients follow the wait-and-see approach
- Getting 75+ year old patients to schedule appointments is an outreach challenge
- Most community clinics do not have scalable scheduling technology platforms
“Those in disadvantaged communities are at greatest risk of not receiving the vaccine on time,” Graham Knaus told the California State Association of Counties. “We are doubling our efforts to reach out to the communities in a system that is incredibly complex and changing by the day.”
Smaller providers, such as NEMS, said they administered more doses than reflected in the data. Currently, there is no uniform vaccination system for provinces, state or federal vaccinations, so some providers have to create their own workflows.
Our research unit reached out to other countries to compare data, but contra Costa, Alameda, San Mateo and San Francisco have not yet released any supplier-based information.
“We are trying our best to get the vaccines into the arms of people, and we want to do the job,” said Dr. Tai said.
Candice Nguyen is an investigative reporter at NBC Bay Area. Email [email protected] for her about this story or others.