East Bay Times

Is there enough vaccine supply?

State adds to number of eligible residents

- By Maggie Angst mangst@ bayareanew­sgroup.com

An additional 7.6 million California­ns will be eligible to start booking COVID-19 vaccine appointmen­ts later this week. But whether they’ll be able to secure an appointmen­t right away or weeks from now will depend on where a person lives and how many doses will be available there.

Starting Thursday, California­ns age 50 and up in all 58 counties can officially get vaccinated through regular channels such as public health department­s and health care providers. And two weeks later, on April 15, all California­ns 16 and older will become eligible for a vaccine.

Currently, more than a quarter of California­ns have received at least one

dose of the vaccine, and about half of the state’s population was eligible. Thursday’s dramatic expansion of vaccine-eligible California­ns is expected to bring the total to about 25 million, or nearly twothirds of the state.

Darren Ng, a spokespers­on for the California Department of Public Health, said Monday that based on the state’s anticipate­d supply, it will take weeks if not months to vaccinate all eligible California­ns.

“Everybody will be eligible, but we want to make sure people have proper expectatio­ns on what that means,” Ng said in an interview.

About 24% of California­ns age 50-64 already have received at least one dose, according to the state health department, while 38% of residents age 18-49 have had at least one shot, likely because of their occupation or health status.

Several California counties, including the Bay Area’s Contra Costa and Solano, earlier this month on their own lowered their age requiremen­t for vaccinatio­ns to 50 because available appointmen­ts were going

unused. Contra Costa County later this week intends to make vaccines available to anyone 16 and older, but a date hasn’t yet been decided, spokespers­on Will Harper said Monday.

The statewide expanded eligibilit­y for residents between age 50 and 64 comes just two weeks after California opened up vaccine appointmen­ts to an additional 4 million to 6 million people with “high risk” health conditions and disabiliti­es, homeless or incarcerat­ed individual­s and public transit workers and janitors — many of whom are still waiting to get their vaccines.

Here’s what else you should know about this week’s vaccine eligibilit­y expansion.

Will I be notified when I can book an appointmen­t?

If you enter your personal informatio­n into your county’s vaccinatio­n website and there are open appointmen­ts, you should receive a notificati­on via email or text message on Thursday reminding you that you’re eligible to make an appointmen­t. In San Francisco, officials said they’ll be sending out reminder messages sometime Thursday morning.

When can I book an appointmen­t?

In Contra Costa and Solano counties, people who live or work there and are 50 and older can book an appointmen­t today.

But in most Bay Area counties, vaccine supply is still very limited and inconsiste­nt, so it could take days or weeks for residents age 50-64 to make an appointmen­t. Neverthele­ss, it doesn’t hurt to try.

The state’s My Turn website, health care providers such as Kaiser Permanente and Sutter Health, and the San Francisco Health Department do not yet allow residents or patients to preschedul­e appointmen­ts ahead of their eligibilit­y date, meaning that people 50 and older planning to go through those channels will have to wait until Thursday to check for available appointmen­ts. No officials at those agencies would say exactly what time on Thursday people will be able to begin booking appointmen­ts, only that they will open up “on Thursday.”

In contrast, officials in Santa Clara County said people 50 and older can try to book an appointmen­t starting now, but they must make the appointmen­t for Thursday or later. As of

Monday afternoon, there were no available appointmen­ts through the Santa Clara County Health Department, but the county’s vaccinatio­n webpage advises residents to check back regularly as “new appointmen­ts are being added daily.”

For the first time in nearly a month, Santa Clara County has caught up with its second-dose appointmen­ts and plans to offer 32,000 first-dose openings this week. Those appointmen­ts will be available for residents 50 and older, as well as anyone previously eligible who is still awaiting a vaccine, including people age 16-64 with highrisk health conditions and disabiliti­es.

Across the Bay Area, county officials say that there will be no priority given to older individual­s in the 50-64 age group nor to people with underlying health conditions or disabiliti­es who have yet to secure an appointmen­t. Openings will be given to those who are first to book a slot.

How soon will I be able to actually get a vaccine?

This is the million-dollar question and, unfortunat­ely, it is still very uncertain

and varies from county to county.

The San Francisco Health Department said in a statement Monday that given the “insufficie­nt and unpredicta­ble vaccine supply and an increasing need to allocate limited vaccine supply to second doses, many people may experience delays in making a first vaccine appointmen­t in the coming weeks.”

In San Mateo County, where officials received 20,930 doses this week, approximat­ely 200,000 people with underlying medical conditions and disabiliti­es or who work in certain sectors such as transporta­tion and became eligible for vaccines on March 15 still have not been able to get shots due to the continued constraine­d supply, according to Srija Srinivasan, deputy chief of San Mateo County Health.

The county this week will focus on providing appointmen­ts to those awaiting their second doses across the county and firstdose appointmen­ts to residents living in certain lowincome neighborho­ods where vaccinatio­n rates are lower than the county average, including East Palo Alto, North Fair Oaks, San Mateo, South San Francisco and Daly City. San Mateo County residents who are

50 and older but do not live in eligible neighborho­ods will not be able to make a first-dose appointmen­t through the county health department this week.

Why is Contra Costa County already moving to people 16 and older?

Just one week after Contra Costa County expanded its vaccine eligibilit­y to anyone 50 or older, it is planning to allow anyone 16 or older to get vaccinated. The county is not required to get any approval from the state to push ahead of the state’s vaccine rollout plan.

County spokespers­on Will Harper said Monday that the county is “concerned about the number of appointmen­ts available at our community clinics this week.” As of Monday, the county has 20,000 vaccine slots available for the taking.

“The state has always told us not to sit on using vaccines and expand eligibilit­y if you’re able to,” he wrote in an email. “We constantly evaluate the number of vaccine doses coming to us as compared to the number of appointmen­ts available and use that to drive when we open eligibilit­y.”

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