According to health officials, San Francisco health care providers will soon be administering Covid-19 vaccines to grocery workers, teachers and residents over the age of 75, according to a news conference on Tuesday.
“Most of the acute care personnel at the front at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and in Laguna Honda have been vaccinated,” said Dr. Grant Colfax, director of public health in San Francisco, said. “And after today, more than 90 percent of Laguna Honda residents received the first dose of Pfizer vaccine.”
Colfax did not give a fixed date on when the next phase would start or how it would go. He did stress that the vaccines would be distributed by healthcare providers such as Kaiser, UCSF and Sutter Health. And in response to a reporter’s question, he said the city would “investigate” whether large vaccination sites will be faster than what currently exists at various suppliers.
The city will also receive vaccines that are administered to those under its care or who have no insurance. He did not elaborate on how the city’s vaccines would be distributed, but he said they were working closely with Walgreens to vaccinate residents of Laguna Honda.
Colfax did say that the Department of Public Health received 30,000 doses that it distributed throughout the city. After shipment, the state began sending doses directly to health care providers. He did not have those figures.
Colfax also could not say how many of the 80,000 health workers in the city, the highest priority in the state’s driven distribution plan, were vaccinated because they were vaccinated by their own employers. The city only vaccinated employees at its hospital, the Zuckerberg San Francisco General, as well as the approximately 700 residents of Laguna Honda.
UCSF is currently vaccinating up to 1,100 people a day, according to Dr. Joshua Adler, UCSF’s clinical chief.
Adler added that he hopes the hospital will be able to increase its vaccination rate, and that the supply of vaccines has so far been able to keep pace with the rate at which the vaccine is being administered.
“At the moment, we are continuing to focus our efforts on vaccinating health care workers, and we hope to move on to additional groups within the next few weeks,” Adler said.
Colfax also said the next in line for the vaccine will be determined by the state.
“We are awaiting the state to complete the next phase, which is proposed to include frontline, essential workers such as public safety, grocery workers, teachers and those over the age of 75,” Colfax said.
According to a report by the New York Times, California has vaccinated more than 450,000 people, about 1.2 percent of the state’s population, more than any other state or territory through vaccines, but is at the bottom of the list based on percentage of the total population. The Northern Mariana Islands have vaccinated 5.7 percent of their 57,000 inhabitants.
Colfax also shared updates on the new business rates and ICU capacity.
“We are taking on average about 237 new cases of Covid-19 per day,” Colfax said, adding that this figure is high, but an improvement from the 290 average new daily cases in mid-December.
In terms of ICU capacity, the Bay Area region currently has only 5.9 percent availability, keeping us below the state’s home threshold of 15 percent, according to Colfax. San Francisco is currently faring much better than the region, with a local ICU availability of 35 percent, but Colfax also warned that the ICU bed capacity in the city may soon decline.
“Although we now have the ICU beds in San Francisco, it is possible with our boom in the region and across the country, that the number of ICU capacities will drop sharply,” Colfax said. “Maybe because of the deteriorating situation in our local area, or because of needs in the region or the state.”
Four people from outside San Francisco are currently being treated in city hospitals due to the nearby provinces exceeding the hospital’s capacity, Colfax said and more could come.
“While there is care available and people care, it is the moral and ethical right thing to do when asked,” Colfax said.