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The first 5,850 doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccine arrived in Santa Clara County at about 7:30 a.m. Tuesday morning, offering what battle-weary public health leaders called “a glimmer of hope in the long fight” against COVID-19.
Wearing masks and insulated gloves, Quelan To, the public health pharmacy pharmacist-in-charge, and Pharmacy Technician Jenifer Villanueva removed a securely packed box of vials from the subzero shipping container, moving them carefully into a freezer that had been set to 68 degrees Celsius below zero.
The batch is the first of the initial 17,550 doses allocated by the state. The remaining doses will be shipped from the manufacturer directly to the hospitals later this week, including the Veterans Affairs Palo Alto Health Care System. Aside from 230 doses that will in turn be shared with San Benito County, all of the doses will be distributed to people in Santa Clara County in the highest risk categories: front-line health care workers at acute care hospitals as well as staff and residents at skilled nursing facilities.
More vials of vaccines are expected next week, Dr. Marty Fenstersheib, the county’s testing officer, told the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors Tuesday afternoon.
Moderna Inc., the drug manufacturer whose vaccine is awaiting Food and Drug Administration emergency use authorization, plans to deliver 39,300 doses on Dec. 22 to Santa Clara County, he said.
Pfizer has already indicated that a second allocation of its life-saving drug will arrive next week, Fenstersheib said. Though the quantity is still being finalized, he said the county could receive 15,600 more doses — or around 72,000 doses in total between Moderna and Pfizer, with more expected on a weekly basis.
“It will pick up as we move forward,” he said. “We should see more vaccines as we go.”
Skilled nursing facilities have been hit the hardest by the virus, accounting for 45% of the county’s COVID-19 deaths, Fenstersheib said. Because of that, the county will use its first allocation to inoculate the staff of skilled nursing facilities, who will be vaccinated by appointment. The residents of these facilities are also in line for early vaccination: Staff of drug retailers Walgreens and CVS Pharmacy will go to skilled nursing homes starting on Dec. 28, using an allocation from the state provided through a federal program.
“This is a high priority,” Fenstersheib told the county supervisors.
The global vaccination effort — occurring at a pace thought impossible earlier in the year when the pandemic struck — can’t come fast enough, health leaders said Tuesday. The current surge of cases and deaths is far exceeding anything the county and the nation have experienced to date. The new rate of cases reported each day has tripled in the past month alone.
Dr. Sara Cody, the county’s health officer, was overcome with emotion when relaying the latest statistics to the Board of Supervisors on Tuesday.
“We are in very bad shape with the pandemic. We have over 1,000 new cases, and we closed the 50,000 case mark. Today we are reporting 24 new deaths,” she said, pausing to regain composure.
“We have lost 553 people in our county. COVID is on track to be among the five leading causes of death. The pandemic is out of control,” she said.
“But we have to just continue to soldier forward,” she added, urging everyone to continue to practice the oft-repeated public-health precautions. “What we choose to do and choose not to do, it matters — it matters a lot.”
Currently, just 16% of intensive care unit beds are available, and three hospitals — Regional Medical Center of San Jose, O’Connor, and St. Louise Regional — have reached capacity.
The Bay Area will reach its ICU capacity limits by the new year, state officials predict.
Gov. Gavin Newsom on Tuesday said that California is expecting to receive nearly 400,000 doses of coronavirus vaccine by the end of the week in addition to the 327,600 doses the state is currently distributing.
The state received its first shipment of roughly 33,000 vaccines from Pfizer on Monday, with thousands more being delivered “as we speak, into the evening, into the rest of the week,” according to Newsom.
“We’re finally seeing those we value the most … get that support,” Newsom said of health care workers having access to the vaccine. “Those emergency room (doctors) and nurses, folks there on the front lines of this pandemic and have been there from the beginning.”
At a Dec. 15 press conference, Gov. Gavin Newsom announces that California is expeted to receive nearly 400,000 doses of the coronavirus vaccine by the end of the week. Courtesy California Governor Gavin Newsom’s YouTube channel.
Newsom said the state expects to receive another 393,000 vaccine doses from Pfizer later in the week as well as 672,000 doses of the vaccine developed by Moderna by the end of the month. As many as 2.1 million doses of the Moderna vaccine could arrive by the beginning of January, according to Newsom.
California’s advisory committee overseeing vaccine safety and distribution has separated the first vaccine recipients into phases with several sub-tiers based on risk of contracting the virus.
The first tier of the first phase includes roughly 3 million health care workers and staff and residents at long-term care facilities.
In addition, in-home health care workers, primary care clinic workers, laboratory workers, dental health clinic employees and pharmacy staff will be included in the first phase of vaccinations.
The committee is still determining who will be included in the following phase of vaccine dispersal, but Newsom said it could include roughly 8 million people, including teachers, farm workers and grocery store workers.
“There’s light at the end of the tunnel,” Newsom said, “but we’re still in the tunnel.”
At the same time the vaccine is being distributed, the state will also roll out a campaign to ensure residents in all 58 of the state’s counties are vaccinated against the coronavirus.
The state has already invested some $30 million into the “Vaccinate All 58” campaign, which intends to build public trust in the vaccine, especially among the state’s disadvantaged communities.
“It is incumbent upon us to meet people where they are,” Newsom said.
According to Newsom, the campaign will be reproduced in 13 different languages.
“All Californians need to be included in this vaccination process … (W)e can’t leave folks behind,” Newsom said. “We talk in terms of equity, we talk in terms of inclusion — we often advance our values, but we have to make them real and we have to also make them visible to people throughout our diverse communities.”
Find comprehensive coverage on the Midpeninsula’s response to the new coronavirus by Palo Alto Online, the Mountain View Voice and the Almanac here.
