Vaccinations: First vials received Tuesday, vaccinations to take place Wednesday
SANTA CRUZ >> As the Pfizer vaccine was being accepted through FedEx delivery in Santa Cruz County, Deputy Public Health Officer Dr. David Ghilarducci said the vaccines will be distributed within hours — allowing Dominican Hospital operators to tentatively plan to vaccinate their first health care worker Wednesday morning.
As his interview with the Sentinel was taking place, Ghilarducci received a text with pictures of the boxes containing the vaccine — two packages with 975 doses each, stored five per vial.
It is still being determined by county health experts how the vaccine doses — 1,950 in total — will be split between Dominican and Watsonville Community hospitals. There are technical reasons that complicate the decision, Ghilarducci said. Dominican Hospital has 16 regular ICU beds and Watsonville Community Hospital has 6, he confirmed.
“It would be convenient to just split it in half,” the doctor said. “In a perfect world we would be doing a proportional distribution, it would be about two-thirds and one-third. So Watsonville would get about 649 (doses) and 1,287 (doses) would go to Dominican. But Dominican has a freezer, Watsonville doesn’t.”
“We have a freezer at the health department, so we’ll have to figure out the logistics,” he said.
Santa Cruz County officials have been told to expect additional shipments from Pfizer every week, and the Moderna vaccine is on the horizon, Ghilarducci said. When Moderna is available to the state, the county will be allocated and shipped 2,800 doses.
“Every week we will be getting some, either Pfizer or Moderna or whatever else comes, but our goal is to follow the prioritization list of the CDC and the (California Department of Public Health),” he said. “We (need) to get hospitals completely protected ASAP.”
Ghilarducci’s EMS Medical Director tie is deeply rooted in his own history of being a volunteer firefighter out of high school before providing care during international disasters. He said that first responders such as ambulance workers and firefighters will also be included high up in the hierarchy.
“They’re also a pretty vulnerable group we have to keep healthy,” he said.
After the first responders come dialysis clinics and other categories such as correctional facilities, hospitals with correctional facilities and psychiatric hospitals — the last of which is essentially nonexistent in Santa Cruz County, Ghilarducci said. After that, health care providers who are considered lower risk because of the capability of screening patients, such as dentists, will be offered vaccinations.
Nursing homes are also prioritized and would be higher on the list if they were not being served through the Federal Pharmacy Program, Ghilarducci said.
Just part of the solution
While the vaccine is being deployed to help prevent more cases of the novel coronavirus, it should not entirely ease the minds of residents, Ghilarducci explained. Regardless of when the county enters into the state’s Regional Stay-AtHome Order, triggered by a region containing less than 15% ICU capacity, people should be mindful of the fact that Santa Cruz County will have to be self-sufficient.
“I don’t want to alarm people, but I guess I kind of do because ICU capacity is the Achilles heel in our health care system, especially in Santa Cruz County,” he said. “It’s not the number of beds, or rooms, or ventilators, or IVU pumps or even heart monitors. The problem is the people, the staff. To be able to take care of ICU patients requires a lot of training and 1:1 nursing… Normally if we had a regional disaster and we needed help from the outside, it’s readily available… But unfortunately, the whole state is in this situation now.”
While the elderly — particularly those with significant underlying health conditions — have been disproportionately hit by COVID-19, those rolling into emergency rooms across the county tend to be young people.
“We have people coming in now who clearly got together with family during the Thanksgiving break, who really kind of ignored our advice,” Ghilarducci said. “We haven’t seen the full effect of the Thanksgiving holiday yet.”
He commented that young people wait longer before coming in to find out if they have contracted the virus and become “quite sick.”
“Some have to be hospitalized,” Ghilarducci said. “If we see the kind of things happen over the Christmas break we saw over Thanksgiving, come mid-January we are going to be in a really tough spot. ( We are going to be) worse (off) than we are now.”