San Diego County will begin vaccinating police officers, teachers, farm workers and many others this Saturday in an effort to broaden immunity to the coronavirus.
All in all, 500,000 San Diegans fall into the emergency services categories; childcare and education; and food and agriculture will be eligible for their shots.
Vaccination for some in these groups will be handled through purposeful efforts. For example, K-12 teachers and staff will be immunized through a program led by the San Diego County Office of Education and California Schools Voluntary Employees Benefits Association (VEBA), an organization that provides health care benefits to school workers.
Vaccination doses will be preferred to school staff in districts that are open or planning to open. Within these districts, schools with zip codes hardest hit by the pandemic will be first in line.
Supervisor Nathan Fletcher says the province will set aside 20 percent of the vaccine supply for this program – twice the amount the state plans to designate educators.
“Our goal is to get people vaccinated as quickly as possible,” Fletcher said during the province’s coronavirus briefing.
While information about the program will be posted on vebavaccinates.com, provincial officials said K-12 teachers and staff do not need to schedule their own appointments as it will be coordinated by their school districts.
Immunization for the province’s law enforcers will be handled with the help of Scripps Health, one of the two largest health systems in the region. And San Diego firefighters will drive into the country to vaccinate farm workers.
All other San Diegans who may soon be eligible in the group (e.g., grocery store workers) can make an appointment at one of the region’s vaccines or smaller sites, with information on entries and entries available at vaccination superstationsd. com.
However, it is not easy to make an appointment because the number of eligible San Diegans will dwarf the supply of doses in the region.
“The vaccination system and the appointment system will be significantly hampered,” Fletcher said. ‘As soon as we get vaccinated, we make appointments available. And probably as soon as we make it available for the next week or two, they’ll probably be gone immediately. ‘
Uncertainty surrounding supply was one of the few constants during an ever-changing implementation. This is true despite President Joe Biden’s promise to give states a running estimate of how much vaccine they can expect over the next three weeks.
The information is apparently not being passed on to the country, which according to Fletcher is happy if he knows how much vaccine will come in three days.
But he noted that vaccine manufacturers have said they will increase production, and that doses delayed by winter storms are now flowing into the country.
There is another reason to expect supply to increase. On Friday, a panel of researchers will vote on whether they recommend that the Food and Drug Administration authorize Johnson & Johnson’s COVID-19 vaccine.
If this happens, the first doses could start by Monday, according to dr. Wilma Wooten, the province’s public health officer. But she said the country does not know how many doses it will receive. And neither Wooten nor Fletcher has addressed exactly how the country will include a third coronavirus vaccine in the region’s deployment.
“There are ongoing discussions about how to best use the J&J vaccine in the context of others,” Fletcher said, referring to the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines. “But overall, the presence of the J&J vaccine will make things easier than harder.”
Unlike Moderna and Pfizer vaccines, the Johnson & Johnson vaccine requires a single dose. This could be useful at a time when approximately 330,000 San Diegans are waiting to receive their second dose of vaccine. In many cases, appointments have been delayed due to issues.
As vaccine explosions continue, San Diego’s coronavirus statistics continue to improve. The province reported 658 new coronavirus infections on Wednesday; it is 13 days in a row that new cases were below the 1,000 mark. And the total number of San Diegans hospitalized with COVID-19 dropped to 602, with 23 new hospitalizations. Twelve additional COVID-19 deaths bring the province to 3,230 in total.
At this rate, the province could resume outdoor sports again by next week and rise from the most limited reopening of the state, the purple level, to the next level (red level) in the next few weeks. This will allow restaurants and gyms to resume limited indoor operations, along with other gradual openings of the region’s economy.
Recent reports, however, have raised concerns that new strains of the coronavirus could undo the difficult progress in the region.
A study led by UC San Francisco researchers used genetic analyzes to identify the viral variants found in 630 positive coronavirus tests and found that about half of the samples collected between January 10 and January 27 had mutations that indicates new “California” variants of the pathogen. – a clear increase of 16 percent of the samples analyzed in November.
The report has raised fears that these variants, which appear more contagious than other species, will soon cause another outbreak of disease in the country.
Dr. Eric McDonald, medical director of the department’s epidemiology department, asked Wednesday to comment on the report, saying that genetic analyzes conducted by Scripps Research in San Diego estimate that between 30 and 40 percent of the samples taken returning locally, apparently caused. by California variants.
But he also noted that it is too early to say with certainty whether these homemade versions really pose a greater threat.
He added that the total numbers continued to decline, although the California variant was present during the recent increase in hospitalizations in December and January.
“We have no evidence in San Diego that these variants are indeed more contagious, or that diseases and mortality rates are higher,” McDonald said.
Kristian Andersen, the Scripps Research molecular biologist whose team has sequenced thousands of coronavirus genomes in San Diego, says his concern remains B.1.1.7, a variant first spotted in the UK.
“Yes, the California variant has increased – and is probably slightly more transmissible than non-California variants – but not nearly as transmissible as B.1.1.7.”, Andersen said in an email. “We expect B.1.1.7 to be dominant over the next few weeks – probably early to mid-March.
“It will probably eliminate the CA variant.”