Blue Shield to ramp up vaccine rollout

Health insurance giant says it intends to make it possible to vaccinate 3 million a week by March 1

Despite an apparent shortage of doses and a spotty distribution network, Blue Shield of California intends to get 3 million people per week inoculated against COVID-19 starting next month under a contract that gives it control over the state’s vaccine rollout.

The 55-page contract, made public Monday, comes in the wake of Gov. Gavin Newsom’s recent announcement that the Oaklandbased nonprofit health insurance giant would take over the administration of vaccines.

Until now, counties allocated vaccine doses to hospitals, medical centers and other sites as they saw fit. Blue Shield will do that now, at least until Dec. 31 when the contract ends.

The contract allows Blue Shield to choose which health care providers will give the shots. The company promised to distribute the vaccine with “a focus on equity” and an eye on the communities hit hardest by the coronavirus pandemic.

By April 30, Blue Shield’s goal is to vaccinate 4 million Californians per week, or 1 million more per week than it hopes to inoculate starting March 1.

The state has administered about 6 million vaccines total so far, according to Newsom’s tweet on Monday.

The contract also calls for providers to give 95% of the vaccine doses within a week of receiving them and to make them available to most people within an hour distance in rural areas and 30 minutes in urban areas. For those who are homebound or cannot travel to get a shot for health reasons, Blue Shield must find a way to get the vaccine to them.

The state will set monthly goals for vaccinating a certain number people in communities most vulnerable to COVID-19 or deemed by the state to be under-resourced. For example, Blue Shield must have administered vaccines to at least 60% of disproportionately impacted populations by the end of March and at least 50% to people living in communities ranked in the bottom 25% of the Healthy Places Index.

Blue Shield must also report to the state every day where there are low-performing vaccine providers or where COVID-19 rates spike.

As part of the agreement, the company cannot bill the state more than $15 million during the contract’s term and has to run the program at cost, making no profits.

California’s vaccine rollout — mostly a patchwork of distribution strategies — has been slow and chaotic. It has left many residents frustrated with hours-long

waits on hold, cancelled appointments or failure to secure appointments while seeing others in different health plans do so easily.

It’s unclear if the new program from Blue Shield will solve the state’s vaccine challenges, which many local officials have attributed to a shortage rather than logistics.

A mass vaccination site at the Oakland Coliseum that opened Tuesday is expected to provide up to 6,000 vaccines per day to eligible residents, part of an effort to expand mass vaccination sites across California.

Last week, the 49ers football team and Santa Clara County opened Levi’s Stadium for vaccinations, and officials hope it’ll become the state’s largest site in the coming weeks.

But the supply of vaccines going to those sites is proving insufficient. In San Francisco, officials announced they’ll have to pause two high-volume COVID-19 vaccination sites — at Moscone Center and the City College of San Francisco — for several days over “limited, inconsistent, and unpredictable” supply.