After struggling for weeks to extend South Bay’s COVID-19 vaccination, Santa Clara County officials warn that a specific dose should not be administered due to an increased risk of allergic reactions.
Santa Clara County received approximately 21,800 doses of the Modern Lot 41L20A distributed on January 5 and January 12. More than 330,000 doses of the site were distributed across the state. Health officials are now interrupting vaccines out of the lot and warning that some individuals may experience an acute allergic reaction, anaphylaxis, after receiving their shot.
“According to the province, no doses of this vaccine have been administered to anyone in Santa Clara County,” the health department said in a statement.
State health officials announced on Sunday that less than ten people had been given vaccines of this fate, responding to medical attention, and that the decision to interrupt the administration of the fate was ‘out of the utmost caution’. The reactions were recorded in several individuals at a large vaccination center in San Diego.
“Our goal is to provide the COVID vaccine safely, quickly and fairly,” said Dr. Erica S. Pan, an epidemiologist in California, said.
Pan said the California Department of Public Health recommends that suppliers use other available vaccine supplies and interrupt the administration of vaccines from Moderna Lot 041L20A until the investigation is completed by the CDC, FDA, Moderna and the state. “
Provincial officials have notified healthcare providers who have received doses of this lot, particularly Santa Clara Valley Medical Center, Stanford Health Care and El Camino Health. Health officials said they were not aware of unusual adverse reactions to COVID-19 vaccinations in Santa Clara County, but were interrupting the administration of this lot to comply with the state’s recommendation.
“We have not administered any vaccine from this lot and have withdrawn it from our current stock,” said Christopher Brown, spokesman for El Camino Health. ‘We are awaiting additional information from Santa Clara County and the California Department of Public Health. El Camino Health’s community vaccination clinic is scheduled to continue tomorrow with the Moderna vaccine that is not of this specific fate. ”
Dr. Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association, said the fact that allergic reactions were caught quickly and that fate was drawn is an example of how the system works.
“This is a known complication of the vaccine,” Benjamin said. “The numbers (of the reactions) are still very small, but the fact that it came from one fate, one place, one enterprise, means that the investigation (into the cause) should be much easier.”
Meanwhile, Benjamin said millions of doses of COVID-19 vaccines have already been administered without complications.
Kaiser Permanent officials said in a statement to San José Spotlight that all the vaccines from the affected lot had been removed from the system’s vaccine supply.
“At Kaiser Permanente, we have not seen any serious adverse reactions in patients who received the vaccine,” the statement said. “Although the entire vaccine supply is extremely limited, this situation affects only a relatively small percentage of our supply.”
Stanford Health Care spokeswoman Julie Greicius said Stanford had received 4,000 doses of the affected lot but had not yet been used.
“The doses are being sequestered to further the guidance of our provincial and state health authorities,” Greicius said.
Civil servants and provincial officials promised updates as they learned more.
Provincial officials also announced over the weekend that a new COVID-19 variant has been discovered in Santa Clara County. Scientists do not know how contagious or transmissible the variant is, but it has increased since November and is linked to several major outbreaks in the South Bay.
As of January 18, the province reported 93,557 COVID-19 cases and 1,076 deaths.
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Contact Madelyn Reese at [email protected] or follow her on Twitter @MadelynGReese