Deluge of inquiries as county ends age limit
day we open up thousands more appointments. We will get to you. If you’re patient, you should be getting an appointment within the next few weeks.”
It is not a straightforward firstcomefirstserved system because the county is prioritizing people who live in lowerincome areas with higher infection rates. So the county sorts through the appointment requests that come in each day and sends out invitations, or tickets, to those at highest risk first, before sending out the remaining invitations.
Since the start of the worldwide vaccination campaign in December, local health officials have cited the lack of vaccine supply and unpredictable allocations as the main factors preventing them from vaccinating more people. But on Wednesday, Tzvieli offered a somewhat sunnier projection for local residents’ vaccination prospects: With vaccine supply expected to ratchet up the next several weeks, the Bay Area should expect to see more appointments available in the coming days and weeks.
At the new mass vaccination site that opens Thursday at Concord’s Six Flags Hurricane Harbor, for instance, weekly shots going into arms are expected to double in number by next week to the 15,000to20,000 range. That comes as welcome news to the roughly 375,000 county residents 16 and over who, with the Tuesday lifting of age limits, now are all eligible for shots.
One reason Contra Costa County was able to open up vaccinations to everyone two weeks earlier than the start of the statewide “open season” is because many of its local community clinics are now receiving more vaccine directly from the federal government, as federally designated health centers that operate in mostly underserved communities, in addition to the vaccine they’re getting from the state. This meant more appointments were opening up that needed to be filled.
“The thought process behind opening up our eligibility to everyone 16 and over was really simple,” Tzvieli said. “We had appointments that were at risk of not being filled and we wanted to fill them. We knew we would get a deluge of interest, but we also knew that we had more confidence in our vaccine supply coming through, that we’ll be able to have more and more appointments. So rather than doing it piecemeal ... we knew we had the partnerships and doses in place to get the vaccine out to our community.”
Contra Costa County is the first Bay Area county, and one of the largest California counties yet, to expand vaccine eligibility to everyone 16 and over. Some smaller counties, including Butte and Stanislaus counties, have also done so. For the rest of the state, though, universal eligibility does not begin until April 15.
People 16 and over who live or work in the county can sign up for vaccine appointments at www.cchealth.org.