In short order, the Mountain View Community Center has changed from a recreational space to a mass vaccination center, with the goal of providing the COVID-19 vaccine to 1,000 people daily.
The Vaccination Center at 201 S. Rengstorff Ave. is the latest attempt by Santa Clara County to expand access to the vaccine, and the first one in Northern County. Health officials say the site is open from Friday, and that it is the third community-based vaccination center to be set up quickly by the country in recent months.
To date, the Santa Clara County health system has administered nearly 60,000 doses of the COVID-19 vaccine to residents of the province, making it by far the largest provider of vaccines in the region. Behind it are Stanford Health Care at 32,720 and Kaiser Permanente at 17,648.
Vaccines were distributed primarily at acute care hospitals and provincial-run clinics, making the city’s community center an early outpost for easy access outside of a clinical setting. Mountain View Mayor Ellen Kamei took confidence in a short time to reconfigure the space in a vaccination center, relying on a close partnership between Mountain View and the province.
“Through this collaborative effort, we are making it easier for Mountain View residents and others living and working in Northern County to be vaccinated against this highly contagious virus,” Kamei told a news conference Friday.
The center is subject to the vaccination criteria of the country, which is still quite strict and excludes most people with private insurance. Provincial officials have repeatedly said that people cared for by Kaiser or Sutter Health should seek a vaccine from their own healthcare provider, and that they are likely to be turned away at the vaccination sites run by the province. Stanford patients, on the other hand, are encouraged to get vaccinations through their own providers, but according to provincial supervisor Joe Simitian, they will not be expelled from the provincial sites.
The province and most health insurers currently provide vaccines to frontline health workers and all residents over the age of 75. In the case of Stanford patients, residents 65 years and older are eligible.
Future vaccine supplies are unpredictable and are provided weekly by the state, making it difficult to plan ahead or accommodate a large amount of new vaccine requests, Drs. Jennifer Tong, co-principal for Santa Clara Valley, said. Medical center. The latest award for Santa Clara County was 20,000 doses, according to her, which is much smaller than expected.
In addition, separate grants are made to private healthcare providers such as Kaiser and Sutter to serve their own patients, making it unachievable for the country to serve all patients with private insurance.
So who can actually take advantage of the new vaccination site in Mountain View? Along with the approximately 300,000 people who have patients in the country’s health system, all uninsured residents are eligible, including employees in the service sector who cannot afford health insurance and those who prefer not to insure, according to Simitian.
The original COVID-19 distribution plan for the province, which was sent to the state last month, did not explicitly appeal to the northern province, but designated the nine provincial health clinics as ‘distribution points’. Simitian sharply criticized the wording, expressing concern that North County residents do not have a local place to receive the vaccine. None of the health clinics in the province are located in the Northern County.
Simitian, who represents several North County and West Valley cities, said his district has 40,000 low-income residents in Medi-Cal and the majority of seniors in any district of the country, stressing the importance of a close and convenient place to receive. the vaccine. He boasts of Mountain View’s caring community and ‘can-do’ spirit to meet the need for public health.
“We needed a place in the Northern County to serve the people in our region,” Simitian said. “It’s very gratifying to know that we’re up and running, and in a short time we’ll only be on this site at 1,000 vaccinations.”
Anyone wishing to make an appointment for the COVID-19 vaccine is asked to visit sccfreevax.org, a country portal with links to various healthcare providers.