Added 4-6 million to California’s Vaccine Eligibility List – NBC7 San Diego

California Health Director Mark Garry will soon list 4 million people eligible for coronavirus vaccination by adding people with severe disabilities and those in high health at risk of infection and death on Friday. Said it would expand to 6 million people. ..

Eligible on March 15 are people with certain cancers, heart, lung, and kidney conditions, pregnant women, people with Down syndrome, organ transplant recipients, and severe obesity. They join people over the age of 65 and people with high-risk job descriptions who were already eligible under state plans.

California is suffering from a vaccination shortage, and Ghaly says how long it will take for the state to vaccinate an estimated 17 to 19 million people to be vaccinated after a new addition. I couldn’t say.

“Without that crystal ball in the assignment, it would be really hard to answer,” he said. The country’s most populous states can be expected to receive more than one million doses each week, at least for the next few weeks, Ghaly said.

Each of the current vaccines (Pfizer and Moderna) requires two doses to be fully effective. Therefore, it takes 1 million shots to cover 500,000 people.

Judy Mark, president of Disability Voices United, thanked the states for raising immunizations for persons with disabilities, but said it should be done soon.

“The effective date of March 15 can be too late for many disabled people who may die of COVID in the meantime,” she said in a statement.

Mr Garry said the state needed extra time to build capacity. He said people with disabilities and people with certain health conditions are difficult to reach because they need to be vaccinated at home.

Governor Gavin Newsom said the state acknowledges that people with certain physical and intellectual disabilities have “unique vulnerabilities.”

While observing the San Francisco mass vaccination site, “I want the disabled community to know. I heard your story. Even if access is lacking, I will continue to improve to provide access.” He said.

California has emerged from the worst of the pandemic. Over the past three weeks, new virus cases and hospitalizations have declined dramatically, and the number of deaths exceeding 3,500 per week has begun to decline, albeit slowly.

Due to the explosive increase in cases and hospitalizations, the state began deploying the vaccine in December. Authorities initially focused on immunizing people based on the level of risk from their work. Healthcare workers lined up first, and the state subsequently added educators, agricultural workers, and rescue workers. It is also applicable to those in nursing care facilities and those over 65 years old.

As the state passes through these groups, it will move to an age-based system rather than a job description-based system. The state has not fully developed an age-based standard plan.

“We are working to determine what that age range is and when that date will be triggered. It will be driven primarily by the supply of vaccines,” said Ghaly. ..

After being criticized for failing to protect people at high risk of infection and death from COVID-19, the state decided to add disabled people and health conditions of all ages.

Still, California surgeon president Dr. Nadine Burke Harris said doctors had to make decisions and would not allow everyone to be vaccinated.

“It’s really important for providers to exercise a fair amount of awareness about the shortage of supplies to make the vaccine accessible to the most risky people,” she told KGO-TV on Friday. I did.

Dr. Louise Aronson, a professor of geriatrics at the University of California, San Francisco, said this would not be easy for doctors.

“It will be difficult for both patients and clinicians, but the way we all overcome it is to prioritize the highest risk and keep the patient a little longer. This is one of the most difficult questions. This moment in history, “she said.

California has opened many mass vaccination centers in the past few weeks, but is not operating near full capacity due to a lack of vaccines. The City of Los Angeles has temporarily closed Dodger Stadium and four other vaccination sites until supplies are replenished.

Dr. Paul Simon, Chief Science Officer of LA County, said: He said the county could administer about 600,000 doses a week, but about 200,000.

To date, California has given 5.5 million doses, with more than 1 million taking both.

Also on Friday, the state released data showing the age, race, gender, and county of vaccinated people. According to state officials, this is only for health care workers, caregivers, and people over the age of 65, so it does not accurately reflect the entire California population.

Incomplete data is just one piece of information trusted by officials trying to distribute vaccines to the most vulnerable people in California. The state has not released a zip code breakdown of vaccines that can be used to measure whether people in disadvantaged areas are vaccinated, but does provide a demographic breakdown of vaccinations by county. Did.

Data show that nearly one-third of vaccines were given to whites, nearly 16% to Latino Americans, more than 13% to Asian Americans, and less than 3% to blacks. The remaining 14% went to people identified as multi-ethnic, 12% went to those listed as “other”, and the rest went to “unknown”. The state relies on self-identification or data from healthcare providers.

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Contributed by Associated Press writer Janie Har of San Francisco and Amy Taxine of Orange County.