VACCINE ELIGIBILITY OPENS TO ALL 16 AND UP IN NEW MILESTONE
Local officials urge patience as more try to schedule doses
Four months to the day after the first coronavirus vaccine doses went into arms in San Diego County, everyone age 16 and older now qualifies, as of today, to sign up for the quick stick that increasingly governs where people can go when they leave their homes.
It’s a particularly heady milestone given skepticism among many experts that getting any meaningful vaccine supply was likely in the first half of 2021.
How far things have come since those first Pfizer doses were administered to health care workers on Dec. 15, 2020. Just four months ago, the road to herd immunity seemed endless with more than a million people with special circumstances — either due to their age, employment status or medical condition — in line to get their shots before anything became available for the rest.
And yet, here we are. Halfway through April, 1.2 million San Diegans have had their first doses. More than 2 million doses have
been administered; 757,355, as of Wednesday afternoon, are fully vaccinated.
Dr. Christopher Longhurst, a pediatrician and chief information officer at UC San Diego who led the university’s massive vaccination superstation at Petco Park, said reaching this milestone so soon bodes very well for the summer, though there may be some shortterm frustration as more than 1 million people start hunting for vaccination appointments.
“This may result in some frustration, but I still expect that everyone who wants to be vaccinated will be able to get their first shot by the end of May, ensuring safe neighborhood barbecues for the Fourth of July,” Longhurst said.
Nathan Fletcher, chairman of the county Board of Supervisors, said during the region’s weekly COVID-19 briefing that he already had his shot lined up.
“I will become eligible tomorrow and have decided to go to the VA in the morning and get my first shot of the Pfizer vaccine,” Fletcher said.
He was quick to note that appointments, as they have with each incremental advance in the region’s eligibility criteria, are likely to go fast, especially at first when the pent-up demand of many is released all at once.
It is unclear exactly how many San Diego County residents will be added to the vaccine-eligible pool today because many are already eligible if they work in various essential jobs —from health care and law enforcement to education and food service — have a qualifying medical condition or are age 50 or older.
However, a little simple math shows that, with 1.2 million people having already received their first dose, and the estimated local population ages 16 and older at 2.6 million, about 1.4 million local residents remain unvaccinated. If all of them go looking for appointments today, there is likely to be a wait.
“Please be patient as we work through this system,” Fletcher said.
A recent development, namely the pause of Johnson & Johnson vaccine administration while blood clots among a very tiny group of previous recipients are investigated, has created some confusion as to how demand might change in the near term.
A poll conducted by KGTV Channel 10 and The San Diego Union-Tribune Tuesday, the day the federal government hit the pause button, found a 21 percent drop in the number of local residents who said they plan to get vaccinated as compared to the same question that was asked two weeks ago. Some of that drop has to do with the fact that the denominator — all unvaccinated residents — has decreased by hundreds of thousands, meaning that those who have never considered getting vaccinated, regardless of the current situation with J&J, now make up a larger share of those who remain unvaccinated. But poll results indicated that a large proportion of those surveyed were aware of the J&J news, suggesting that the abrupt sidelining of so much supply likely had at least some impact on overall comfort with vaccination.
Locally, though, Fletcher said Wednesday that the change is little more than a mosquito bite. Johnson & Johnson doses, he said, make up only about 3 percent of overall supply.
Some among the newly vaccine eligible can’t receive those particular doses anyway because they are approved only for people age 18 and older. Doses manufactured by Pfizer Inc. are the only approved coronavirus vaccines approved for use with 16- and 17-year-olds.
The state announced modifications to its MyTurn online appointment scheduling system Wednesday that are designed to make sure that anyone in the 16 to 17 age bracket can only see available Pfizer bookings.
Californians are making about 106,000 appointments a day through MyTurn. Next week, the figure could jump to 120,000 or more, according to an official tasked with managing MyTurn. The official added that the state is working to bring more vaccine providers onto the scheduling system, including retail pharmacy chain CVS, and has already enlisted 200 providers.
Today also brings increased operating capabilities for social and informal gatherings, private events and indoor seated live events. Venues with capacities greater than 1,501 may now fill 10 percent of their indoor seats, up to a limit of 200 people, or 35 percent of all seating if all attendees show proof of full vaccination or a negative test result. The state clarified that PCR tests must have been performed within the previous 72 hours to be valid while antigen tests are acceptable as long as they were performed within 24 hours of events.
San Diego’s daily COVID-19 tracking report included 260 additional cases and 178 current COVID-related hospitalizations. Both numbers track with recent trends.