Supply constricts vaccine rollout
Sangiacomo: ‘It’s not for lack of infrastructure’
While reporting some good news in that the number of new Covid-19 cases in Mendocino County has been dropping recently, city of Ukiah officials also reported this week that vaccine distribution in the county has not been as robust as needed.
“But it’s not for lack of infrastructure, or volunteers, or ability to get the vaccine out — it is a lack of vaccines available to our county,” City Manager Sage Sangiacomo told the Ukiah City Council Wednesday, explaining that while county officials and the Board of Supervisors are
“working very hard and engaging with the state to increase the resources to our county, and we have demonstrated that we are ready (to administer the vaccine efficiently), it is simply not getting to us from the state and federal government.”
Sangiacomo described the county’s “infrastructure” of employees, volunteers and other partners (including the city) created to disseminate the vaccines in the county as being “able to administer doses very quickly, in most cases within 48 hours,” but that the rate of vaccination is ultimately dependent on supply.
“And it is really imperative, if we are going to improve our (vaccination) numbers across the state and the United States, that we get the vaccines and are allowed to administer them,” Sangiacomo said. “The problem is in the pipeline of getting the vaccines to our county.”
Traci Boyl, sitting in for city Emergency Services Administrator Tami Bartolomei, reported to the council Jan. 20 that the city’s role in the vaccine rollout has centered largely on “three, popup vaccination clinics” held at the Ukiah Valley Conference Center
that so far have administered about 500 doses.
Boyl said the first clinic was held Jan. 4 when a freezer failure at Adventist Health Ukiah Valley necessitated the use of more than 800 thawed vaccine doses within a two-hour window, with the city administering about 110 of them. The second clinic hosted by the city was on Jan. 12 where “approximately 370 people from the schools, including employees of the Ukiah Unified School District, the
Mendocino County Office of Education and Mendocino College, were vaccinated. About 400 vaccines were administered on a third event held on Jan. 15.”
Boyl said that a good distribution structure had been put in place by the county and its partners, but that the rate of administration has been constricted by supply.
Also Wednesday, Boyl reported that Mendocino County Health Officer Dr. Andy Coren “confirmed that overall cases (of Covid-19) have dropped slightly in the last few days. And although we are still having about 35 to 40 new cases per day, this is a slight decline from previous levels.”
Other good news for the county is that “our region still has 27-percent (Intensive Care Unit) bed capacity, which has kept us out of the strictest stay-at-home orders,” Boyl said.
On Wednesday, Mendocino County officials reported 21 new cases of Covid-19 for a total of 3,192. Also as of Jan.20, there were 12 of those patients in the hospital, one of whom was in the Intensive Care Unit. The daily average of new cases was down slightly to 32.43, but the percentage of positive cases increased to 6.91 percent.