Public health officials in Santa Clara County announced Tuesday that they are receiving tens of thousands of additional doses of COVID-19 from the federal government. This allocation comes because the province is discontinuing the doses of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine due to extremely rare cases of blood clotting.
With the recent allocation, Santa Clara County will be able to vaccinate to its goal of 200,000 residents per week.
Health officials said earlier that the only factor affecting the amount of vaccines administered is not the state vaccines. Officials celebrated the opening of a mass vaccination center at Levi’s Stadium in early February, claiming that the place could accommodate 15,000 vaccine doses per day, but quickly lamented that there were not enough vaccine doses to utilize the capacity of the premises.
“We’ve been talking for a long time about the huge capacity we have, and we just need the vaccine,” said COVID-19 test officer Marty Fenstersheib. ‘Well, in the end, we’re going to see a huge increase in the vaccine we’re getting, and an increase in the appointments we have available. This is a very big milestone for our community and the country’s effort to provide vaccination to all our residents. ”
The province will receive the doses through several federally qualified health centers. The first shipments of additional vaccine supplies arrived Tuesday morning, and provincial officials said they expected additional stock to arrive next week.
Officials also announced on Tuesday that anyone in the Santa Clara province, 16 years and older, could plan their appointment with the vaccine – two days earlier than required by the state.
The grand award comes on the news that the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration are investigating an extremely rare blood clotting symptom in six individuals who received the Johnson & Johnson vaccine. Santa Clara County will suspend the administration of all Johnson & Johnson vaccines until the agencies provide further clarification.
Fenstersheib said: “Those who have existing appointments (it would have been) the Johnson & Johnson vaccine will be housed by one of the two other vaccines available.”
More than 60,000 individuals in Santa Clara County have already received the Johnson & Johnson vaccine.
“It is very difficult to say definitively that this condition is related to the vaccine, as it is a condition that we see in people who have never received a J&J vaccine,” said Dr. Jennifer Tong, co-principal at Santa Clara Valley Medical Center, said. “It is therefore out of a plethora of warning that the CDC is making this recommendation.”
Fenstersheib said he is not sure how much Johnson & Johnson vaccine the province has left, but there are several thousand doses.
All six cases of blood clotting were among women between 18 and 48 years of age. The women had symptoms that occurred between six and 13 days after their vaccination. So far, there has been only one recorded death at the national level, a 45-year-old woman in Virginia who died in mid-March two weeks after receiving the vaccine.
According to Fenstersheib, people who have received the Johnson & Johnson vaccine and develop severe headaches, abdominal pain, leg pain or shortness of breath should visit their doctor.
Contact Madelyn Reese at [email protected] or follow @MadelynGReese on Twitter.