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Outraged that California’s new vaccine distribution plan won’t get them first dibs on COVID-19 vaccine doses meant for the state’s hardest-hit communities, Santa Clara County leaders said on Thursday that they want to leave the third-party distributor program being run by Blue Shield.
Community, city and nonprofit leaders leading the vaccination fight against the deadly virus in the county said the state’s distribution program is already failing and is not reaching the most affected groups in their county. Nonsensical metrics lump together wealthy and needy communities because they share the same ZIP code. The resulting averages have caused the most disadvantaged residents in the state’s highest population areas to be ignored for priority vaccine distribution. The state has said its program has set a goal of distributing 40% of its vaccine allocation to underserved communities to address equity issues.
But health care providers partnering with the county for vaccine doses to administer to the most vulnerable residents said the state program is working against their efforts.
They are demanding the state work directly with them and cut out the middleman and to allow counties with already well-established vaccine infrastructures to distribute the doses themselves. The county has set up a well-functioning collaborative that has already been reaching underserved communities, they said at the Thursday press conference outside AACI’s offices in San Jose. The nonprofit has partnered with the county in providing seniors and minorities with vaccines.
The state has identified more than 400 ZIP codes that are on the priority list for 40% of California’s doses allocation, ostensibly to close the socioeconomic disparity and access-to-health-care gap. But since the Blue Shield program’s inception in early March, no ZIP code in either Santa Clara or San Mateo counties has been included for distribution priority.
Luisa Buada, CEO of Ravenswood Family Health Network, said residents of hard-hit communities her organization serves, including East Palo Alto in San Mateo County, Sunnyvale and Mountain View, were not receiving any additional vaccines under the new system.
Last week, they “just disappeared,” she said. The state is “putting numbers before people.”
Many of the residents are also high-risk essential workers, she added.
The new program threatens to erode much of the trust the county and its partner agencies have built in the hardest-hit communities. Reymundo Espinosa, CEO of Gardner Health Services in San Jose, said his organization has worked hard to reach out to many residents in one of the hardest hit ZIP codes in the south county through door-to-door outreach, building trust among populations that are often wary of the government. The efforts have made a difference. Ten weeks ago, the COVID-19 positivity rate in that ZIP code was 27%; it’s now down to 11.5%, he said. Even as Gardner Health staff have built up demand from residents, they are facing vaccine shortages due to the state’s new distribution program. To meet the demand, they had to ask the county for additional vaccine doses, he said.
Espinosa and other vaccine distributors at the Thursday press conference demanded the state to take swift action and put the rollout back into the hands of the county. “This couldn’t be worse possible timing of a decision like this,” he said, as demand is rising and the county must swiftly inoculate people to stanch any emerging variants that are now mutating in the community. Two variants are of particular concern in the county currently, county Health Officer Dr. Sara Cody told the Board of Supervisors on Tuesday.
Mountain View Mayor Ellen Kamai said that a vaccination partnership the city had planned with Ravenswood Family Health Network had to be canceled due to the vaccine uncertainty.
At the heart of the matter is that the county and its partners understand and have long-term relationships with their communities, something that the private insurer Blue Shield lacks, the nonprofit health care providers and officials said.
Supervisor Cindy Chavez said the county’s infrastructure could handle 200,000 vaccinations per week, given adequate doses. The county and its partners are asking for more flexibility from the state to operate under its own system.
Chavez pointed to an example of the swift breakdown since Blue Shield took over. When vaccines first became available and Kaiser Permanente fell short of doses, the state approved the county’s request to distribute 5,000 vaccines from its stockpile to the health care provider. However, one week ago, Blue Shield rejected the county’s request for more doses to cover 20,000 Kaiser Permanente members who scheduled appointments through the county. Those members had to reschedule through Kaiser.
Supervisor Susan Ellenberg, who represents Santa Clara County on the California State Association of Counties, said the state’s program is counterproductive.
“If it isn’t broke, why try to fix it?” she said.
Talks with the state are showing some progress, including the possibility of entering into memoranda of understanding with California to ensure the county will receive the vaccines they need, Ellenberg said.
The California Department of Public Health did not respond to a request for comment as of Thursday afternoon.
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Find comprehensive coverage on the Midpeninsula’s response to the new coronavirus by Palo Alto Online, the Mountain View Voice and the Almanac here.
If you don’t like this, then vote to recall Newsom. This is his leadership.
@Zack (hate to admit – but Newsom is The Man in charge, greater than $10 Billion in EDD fraud and counting)
94040 – gee, anyone living in this ZIP code knows Varsity Park, up next to MV High School and the City of Los Altos has VASTLY different demographics than Castro City and the hundred apartments along California Ave. By US 2010 Census Tract, we know the demographics! By living here, we KNOW the diversity is not intermixed (it’s quasi-redlined).
I don’t particularly like what I percieve as ‘the arrogence’ of the County Executive, even if he has an MD. But he and the Public Health Office that he administers seems to be ‘closely listening’ to elected community leaders like Our Own Joe, Simitian. Things ‘broken in the process’ seem to GET FIXED. (personal – when Kaiser couldn’t get me, at 70 years, an appointment magic happened -Levi appointments were opened to Kaiser oldsters. “2-in-the-arm”).
So, I think this PUSH is justified, and not just local-agency arrogance.
uh – Wavery Park is the neighborhood near MVHS / but “East” Varsity Park is also in 94040 near Los Altos SD Springer Elementary