California governor says vaccination pace ‘not good enough’

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Only about 1 percent of California’s 40 million residents have been vaccinated against the coronavirus, setting a pace of immunization that’s “not good enough,” Gov. Gavin Newsom said Monday.

The Democratic governor said the state is trying to execute the massive vaccination campaign “with a sense of urgency that is required of this moment and the urgency that people demand.”

Still, the 454,000 doses of vaccine that have been administered in California represent just a third of the more than nearly 1.3 million received in the state so far, according to the California Department of Public Health. Distribution hiccups and logistical challenges — including hospitals having more vaccine doses available than people available to take them — have slowed the initial vaccine rollout in California.

Across the country, the pace of immunizations has gone slower than planned due to logistical hurdles and differing approaches across states and counties. On Monday, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said nearly 4.6 million shots have been dispensed.

Newsom’s comments came Monday as the state’s death toll topped 26,500 and confirmed cases neared 2.4 million since the pandemic began. The state’s swamped hospitals held more than 22,000 coronavirus patients, including nearly 4,700 in intensive care units, the Department of Public Health said.

Even as he acknowledged the state must do better, Newsom sought to shift some responsibility for the slow rollout, noting “the vaccines don’t arrive magically in some state facility.”

Dr. Mark Ghaly, secretary of the California Health and Human Services Agency, said the state assigns the number of doses that local health jurisdictions will receive after getting an allocation from the federal government. The vaccine is then shipped directly to entities like hospitals or county or local public health offices.

California is working to expand the list of sites where the vaccine can be distributed to include pharmacies, clinics and dental offices.