Santa Clara County investigates hospital for offering Los Gatos teachers COVID-19 vaccine

LOS GATOS >> Santa Clara County officials are investigating the South Bay’s Good Samaritan Hospital after it offered Los Gatos teachers COVID-19 vaccinations in what the county has called a “problematic” series of events.

Outcry over the vaccinations, detailed in a Jan. 21 email from the Los Gatos Union School District superintendent and in a public meeting later that night, spread first among local educators and now the county’s health department, which has moved to sanction the hospital’s vaccine doses until it can provide an explanation. Good Samaritan initially contended that it was filling open vaccine appointments according to state guidelines, but later acknowledged it made an “error.”

“Good Samaritan’s actions are problematic for multiple reasons,” wrote Dr. Marty Fenstersheib, the county’s testing and vaccine officer, in a Jan. 22 letter to the hospital obtained by this news organization. While the county will provide the hospital enough doses to complete vaccinations for those who have received the first, it will hold back “any additional doses unless and until Good Samaritan provides sufficient assurances it will follow state and county direction on vaccine eligibility and provides the county with a concrete plan through which Good Samaritan will do so.”

On Jan. 21, teachers in the Los Gatos Union School District received an email from Superintendent Paul Johnson informing them of an “exciting development”: The offer of vaccines via Good Samaritan, which Johnson framed as a thank-you after the district raised funds for 3,500 meals for frontline workers, including at Good Samaritan, at the start of the pandemic.

California’s vaccination rollout does not yet officially include teachers. Per state policy, Phase 1A gives priority to health care workers and residents of long-term care facilities; Phase 1B includes people over age 65, and then those in education and childcare, among other professions.

“They mentioned that our kindness last year was not forgotten and how much they appreciate it,” Johnson said in the email, which was first reported in San Jose Spotlight and obtained by this news organization, and which Fenstersheib references throughout his letter to the hospital. “This is a wonderful gesture by our Good Sam neighbors and I encourage you to take advantage of this within the next few hours. … If there are no available appointments, they are populating the site daily, if not multiple times per day.”

The email was quickly forwarded outside the district, including to the county. School district officials also discussed the situation in a meeting later that night, where Johnson said that upcoming appointments for teachers were scheduled for “throughout this next week.”

Johnson was unavailable for a call Jan. 23 but wrote in an email that “we completely understand concerns about the vaccine rollout” and added that his job, “as superintendent, is to ensure the safety of all our students and staff.”

“That’s why we were so grateful for the opportunity offered to us by Good Samaritan Hospital,” he said.

Los Gatos Union serves about 3,200 students across elementary and middle schools and is a wealthier district, with about 4.4% of students eligible for free and reduced lunch, compared with 34.9% countywide, according to the California Department of Education.

Good Sam representative Sarah Sherwood said Jan. 23 that approximately 65 doses were offered to the school district after the hospital tried and failed to find people within Phase 1A, and those over 65, to use the open appointments when vaccines began to thaw. She could not detail those efforts specifically, but in a statement later provided by the hospital, leadership said that it later “realized we were in error and do sincerely apologize.”

“We are committed to working with the county on a plan to assure we have clarity and are adhering to the state and county guidelines on vaccine eligibility, which we have done so prior to this isolated incident,” said Joe Deschryver, Good Samaritan CEO, in the statement. “Additionally, we are conducting an internal investigation to look at our processes and systems to ensure this does not happen again.”

Sherwood added that while “we do have a very good relationship with the school district … it doesn’t determine who gets the vaccine.”

Jim Fredette, who has taught at the district’s R.J. Fisher Middle School for 15 years, wrote in a public comment during Thursday’s meeting that the offering was “unethical.”

“All that time, I’ve been reminding Fisher students to not cut in line. However, as it turns out, LGUSD not only condones it, but encourages it,” Fredette said. “Even if in some quirk of circumstances, district lawyers justified this action, it is terrible optics. When health care workers and seniors remain unvaccinated, this course of action is wrong, any way you slice it.”

Countywide, Santa Clara has administered 145,074 vaccine doses so far, according to its vaccine dashboard. Good Samaritan has received 6,585 first- and second-round doses and administered just over half of them, with 300 appointments scheduled over the next seven days.

Fenstersheib wrote that because Good Samartian has not begun to broadly vaccinate those over 65, “much less made focused and appropriate efforts to reach that group,” Good Samaritan’s decision did not adhere to the state’s vaccine prioritization or the “level of outreach” necessary before moving to lower tiers.

“Good Samaritan’s decision to offer vaccination only to LGUSD staff also rewarded employees of a school district that had provided fundraising that assisted Good Samaritan employees, rather than prioritizing older educators or those from areas of the county with high prevalence of COVID-19,” he said.

“And by offering vaccination only to staff of a particular school district, Good Samaritan’s actions have created further confusion regarding the category of persons eligible to be vaccinated countywide, causing other educators to understandably but incorrectly expect that they will be able to access vaccination through Good Samaritan and/or other vaccine providers in the county,” Fenstersheib wrote.