Health workers to get vaccine within weeks
More widespread public rollout expected in spring
It’s still yet unclear how many vaccines will be distributed to Humboldt County in the coming weeks, but health care workers who are on the front lines can expect to be the first in line.
In a Monday press conference, Gov. Gavin Newsom said 327,000 doses of pharmaceutical company Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine will be available to state health care systems sometime between Saturday and next Tuesday, Dec. 15. Local public health departments began submitting vaccine orders to the state Department of Public Health on Friday, which Newsom said are currently being reviewed and will be submitted to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Once the CDC receives and reviews those orders, the orders will be submitted to Pfizer, which will
transport the vaccines directly to health care providers, Newsom said.
“We can’t give definitive numbers right now because we don’t have them in our hands, but we’re excited to be getting this first shipment,” said soon-to-be-appointed County Health Officer Dr. Ian Hoffman in a Friday media availability video. “It could be in the next few weeks, so we are rapidly preparing for that and how it will be distributed.”
County Public Health has partnerships with the local hospitals for storing the vaccine and is working on a distribution plan with partners in the community, Hoffman said.
In order to receive the Pfizer vaccine, a facility needs to have ultra- cold storage on-site. St. Joseph Health and Humboldt State University are the only local facilities with “that level of negative temperature storage,” said Mad River Community Hospital spokesperson Pam Floyd.
“We’re on a shared group for that,” Floyd said. “But for the Moderna, which is regular cold storage, we have the storage capacity for that.”
Pfizer’s vaccine is set to receive an emergency use authorization from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Thursday, Moderna’s vaccine is set to receive the authorization a week after and Johnson & Johnson is set to request authorization early next year.
Pfizer and Moderna’s vaccines both require two doses, while the Johnson & Johnson vaccine needs only a single dose.
While the vaccines are in limited supply, the state’s COVID- 19 Vaccination Plan prioritizes delivering doses to people who are at higher risk, such as health care workers who are likely treating COVID-19 patients or people at increased risk for getting severely ill or dying.
“The public’s not going to see it right away,” Floyd said.
Once the vaccines are more widely available, they will more likely be distributed by health care clinics and primary care providers while hospitals will be more focused on their staff and some patients.
With the rollout of the vaccine beginning to take place, Hoffman said “it feels like we are approaching the finish line.”
“We’re very hopeful that we’ll get it out over the coming months into the spring,” Hoffman said.