As they prepare for the unprofitable insurer Blue Shield to take the lead in distributing vaccines in Sonoma County, health officials and local elected leaders were skeptical and worried Wednesday that this move could be another state-led pandemic setback.
To commemorate the COVID-19 vaccine debacle here last month at a state-run Rohnert Park clinic, provincial officials have acknowledged fears of losing control of the vaccination campaign and plan to expand their network of vaccination clinics to keep place.
As of March 7, Blue Shield, which California government officials appointed as the state’s vaccine administrator last month, plans to use the province’s network of clinics, health centers and other partners for vaccinations. However, the insurer will purchase the weekly vaccine supply and decide how many doses will be delivered to individual local vaccination sites. Under its state contract, Blue Shield will also work to ensure that shots go up in arms in a racially equitable manner.
“We have a lot of pieces in place, a Plan B to make sure that if there’s an outline in their system, that we have backup, because we’re doing it now,” said Ken Tasseff, Sonoma County’s vaccine coordinator. . “We are not taking anything down until we are confident that Blue Shield is right.”
Blue Shield also takes control of the scheduling and tracking of the doses of the coronavirus vaccine in the country. This week, the health insurance giant took on the role in ten other counties in California, mostly in the Central Valley.
Government officials said the action was aimed at making residents vaccinate more effectively, ensuring public transparency about where vaccine doses are increasing, and ensuring that shots are fired into the arms of people in communities disproportionate by COVID-19 be hurt.
Provincial health officials and supervisors discussed the Blue Shield shooting takeover during a press conference. They hope the move will increase the weekly vaccines to the country.
Blue Shield on Wednesday declined to answer several questions from a Press Democrat reporter about the new vaccine distribution plan here. Blue Shield senior spokeswoman Erika Conner referred the questions to the California Department of Public Health.
Under a state contract for which he will make no profit, Blue Shield manages a state-owned distribution network that delivered about 1 million doses to residents this week. As California surpassed 50,000 coronavirus deaths on Wednesday, becoming the first state to reach that sad milestone, the state is counting on Blue Shield to accelerate vaccinations.
Dr. Urmila Shende, the province’s vaccine leader, said local public health staff, who had worked for weeks to develop kinks in the province’s vaccination, would do everything in their power to ensure a smooth transition with Blue Shield. Yet she warned that there could be problems.
“We experienced during this whole vaccination process that it is not easy,” Shende said. “So we’re really going to work with the third-party administrator (Blue Shield) to make sure all the things we put in place lead to as successful an implementation as possible.”
Shende believes the province will receive more vaccine doses through Blue Shield, as was the case with some provinces participating in the first wave of centralized distribution.
The country does not yet have nearly enough doses to meet the demand of the residents. Nevertheless, the province has expanded vaccine admissions to a group of more than 60,000 residents, including those 65 and older, plus education, child care, food production, emergency services, groceries and restaurant workers.
The province began vaccinating residents and health care and nursing home residents and staff in December, moving to residents aged 75 and older, then to those between 70 and 74 years before finally agreeing with what the state did in mid-January: start to make appointments for the elderly 65 years and older.
Partnerships with local clinics and community medical providers have led to a strong network of vaccination clinics in the country that can vaccinate far more people than the 7,680 doses the country received this week, Shende said.
“If we had enough vaccine, we could do at least six times as much, if not more,” she said. “We have therefore built up capacity within the last five to six weeks.”
Sundari Mase, provincial health official, said she was concerned that a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach to the distribution of vaccines across the country could cause problems, especially in a state with 58 provinces of different sizes and diverse demographics .
Supervisor Chris Coursey expressed a lack of confidence in Blue Shield’s online vaccination system. The province has earlier experience with the danger of online retailer system vendor OptumServe being used last month for a clinic in Rohnert Park. Since age did not qualify, the country had to cancel thousands of appointments outside the gate.
Lynda Hopkins, chairwoman of the provincial overseers, said she was not happy about the loss of local control over COVID-19 vaccinations, after all the work aimed at ensuring that the most vulnerable residents of the province were vaccinated first. word.
‘We’re going to switch from this constellation approach, where we work with trusted community partners who have a deep relationship with the communities, and a much more centralized, command-and-control approach that is really designed to get the vaccine. out the door as quickly as possible, ”Hopkins said.
You can contact staff writer Martin Espinoza at 707-521-5213 or [email protected]. On Twitter @pressreno.