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The first COVID-19 vaccine doses will soon land in Santa Clara County, with 17,550 doses from Pfizer Inc. set to arrive Dec. 15 and 39,300 doses from Moderna Inc. later this month.
The Pfizer doses will be available to just a small sliver of the population. Only those in the highest risk categories — a subset of health care workers and employees in long-term care facilities — will initially be eligible to receive the vaccine.
Moderna Inc., the second drug manufacturer in the pipeline to receive a possible Food and Drug Administration emergency use authorization for its COVID-19 vaccine, plans to release 39,300 doses later this month to Santa Clara County, the county’s Public Health Department announced on Wednesday night.
The Moderna vaccine would be in addition to an anticipated 17,550 doses of vaccine the county would receive from manufacturer Pfizer Inc., totaling 56,850 for the county’s first allotment. Two doses of the vaccine must be given weeks apart (21 days for the Pfizer vaccine and 28 days for the Moderna vaccine), meaning 28,425 people would receive the first round of vaccine doses.
“While these initial allotments will not provide vaccinations for everyone in the priority groups, more doses of both vaccines are expected to become available in the coming weeks and months. The county is prepared to rapidly and equitably distribute all vaccine doses it receives according to a required vaccine plan submitted to the state earlier this month,” the Public Health Department said in its statement.
The department will help allocate the vaccine doses to hospitals in the county.
Widespread vaccinations are an essential part of the county’s plan for preventing the spread of COVID-19 and eventually lifting public health restrictions. At a county Health and Hospital Committee meeting Wednesday, Health Officer Dr. Sara Cody said very few people will be immunized at first, and that it will take at least a 70% immunization rate to reach herd immunity. Until then, the county won’t be easing up on the countywide health order.
“All the current prevention measures we are doing need to stay in place while this vaccine rolls out,” Cody said.
Santa Clara County Boad of Supervisors’ Health and Hospital Committee discussed the county’s COVID-19 vaccine distribution plan at its Dec. 9 meeting. Courtesy Santa Clara County.
Per federal guidelines, the first round of vaccine doses must go to health care personnel, with the local allocation going to workers in acute care, psychiatric and correctional facility hospitals. Workers in long-term care facilities, including nursing homes and assisted living facilities, will also be eligible.
Residents of long-term care facilities make up only 5% of the county’s total COVID-19 cases, but account for 44% of the deaths. There are no visitors allowed at these facilities, meaning the virus is likely getting into these facilities through the workers, said Dr. Marty Fenstersheib, the county’s COVID-19 testing officer.
Other health care staff ranging from paramedics and EMTs to dialysis center workers are eligible to receive the vaccine, but there’s simply not enough to go around, Cody said. The county has nearly 75,000 acute care hospital personnel, which greatly exceeds the first round of doses.
“We hope if everything works out that by the end of the year, or soon into the next year, we will have all those acute care hospital employees vaccinated,” Cody said.
Pfizer’s vaccine is the first in line to receive approval from the FDA through what’s called emergency use authorization, which the federal agency granted on Dec. 11. California will receive 327,000 doses, of which 17,550 will be sent to Santa Clara County. The hope is that the vaccine will arrive in the county on Tuesday, Dec. 15 and be ready for distribution.
The FDA’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee, which voted on the recommendation late Thursday afternoon, responded to the question, “Based on the totality of scientific evidence available, do the benefits of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine outweigh its risks for use in individuals 16 years of age and older?”
The 21-member committee voted 16-5 in favor of granting its recommendation to the FDA to approve the vaccine, with four members voting no and one abstention. If approved by the FDA’s career officials, as is expected, the vaccines could begin rolling out to the most vulnerable in the Bay Area and nationwide next week.
Moderna is expected to receive approval on Dec. 17, with no clear date for when it could arrive in Santa Clara County, according to county health officials.
Though Pfizer is the first in line, its vaccine is cumbersome to handle. It comes in 975-dose containers that cannot be split, which makes scaling down to small health clinics difficult, and requires “ultra” cold storage of below 70 degrees Celsius. Moderna’s vaccine comes in orders of 100 doses, and needs to be held at below 20 degrees Celsius.
Fenstersheib said the county will be getting new rounds of vaccine doses on a weekly basis, with California slated to receive nearly 1 million vaccine doses between Dec. 21 and Dec. 27. The county allocations for that week’s doses has yet to be determined, he said.
County officials are taking a laser-like focus to vaccinating health care workers, but what about residents? As it stands right now, Cody said the federal government is making doses available to commercial pharmacies who are charged with vaccinating the residents of long-term care facilities, but the county has no details on how that would work.
Earlier this month, county health officials filed a formal COVID-19 vaccine distribution plan to the state detailing how they would get doses out to the public. The plan designates the Santa Clara County Fairgrounds in San Jose and nine county-run health clinics as “points of distribution,” making them critical locations for people to access both doses of the vaccine.
At the Dec. 9 meeting, county Supervisor Joe Simitian hammered county officials for leaving out a huge chunk of Santa Clara County in the plan. His district, which encompasses 400,00 residents in North County and West Valley cities, has no county health clinics, which could force residents in the area to travel long distances to get the vaccine.
Simitian said it’s hard to believe that the county crafted the vaccine plan with two task forces, one composed of health care providers and another composed of community stakeholders, and neither named a single North County or West Valley location as a priority spot to distribute the vaccine.
“How did we get to a Dec. 1 plan sent to the state that overlooked 400,000 people in the North County and West Valley in the fifth supervisorial district?” Simitian asked. “I really am thinking now — how is it everyone sat around a table and neglected to reference distribution to 400,000 people?”
Cody said the language of the plan was inclusive, specifically referring to “other clinics serving low-income, high-risk populations in other parts of the county.” Simitian pushed back, calling that a “patently inaccurate reading” of the plan. He said his district has tens of thousands of people on Medi-Cal, many of whom lack transportation, and that it’s a stretch to think shuffling to and from San Jose twice is enough access.
“The notion that they are going to get, not once, but twice, to a remote location on public transportation three weeks apart strains credulity,” Simitian said.
Find comprehensive coverage on the Midpeninsula’s response to the new coronavirus by Palo Alto Online, the Mountain View Voice and the Almanac here.
Sue Dremann writes for the Mountain View Voice’s sister publication, PaloAltoOnline.com.
Sue Dremann writes for the Mountain View Voice’s sister publication, PaloAltoOnline.com.
Sue Dremann writes for the Mountain View Voice’s sister publication, PaloAltoOnline.com.
