McGuire: ‘light at end of the tunnel’
As COVID-19 vaccination efforts ramp-up across the nation, people are wondering when herd immunity will be achieved. During a virtual town hall on Thursday evening, North Coast State Sen. Mike McGuire fielded constituents’ questions on vaccine distribution and moving forward to a “new normal.”
As local and state government officials have previously stated, vaccine supply is driving vaccine distribution and without a robust vaccine supply, vaccination efforts can only go so far.
“Are things improving? Yes. Should we be satisfied? Absolutely not,” McGuire said. “We know that we must do better and I can promise you we will. Folks have a right to be frustrated, the vaccine rollout has been less than smooth on the federal and stateside. I promise you — and I don’t take this lightly — positive changes are coming but we still have a lot of work in front of us.”
In the short-term, McGuire said health officials expect the state’s case rate to remain “fairly flat” with approximately 5.4 million vaccines being shipped to California from the federal government in the next three weeks.
“(Those) allocations don’t include the direct allocations from the federal government that are
going to Walgreens and CVS Pharmacies,” McGuire said. “Those two pharmacies have individual direct contracts with the federal government and they get their own separate allocation. In addition, some federally qualified health centers and FEMA vaccination sites also get their own separate allocation of vaccines on top of what the state is receiving each week.”
The long-term outlook is promising, McGuire said.
“The federal government is now asking the state of California — in all regions, rural counties and urban areas — to prepare for 4 million vaccines per week (compared to 1.8 million),” McGuire said. “…This plan, among other critical details, will be focused on developing the network needed to greatly expand vaccination operations starting in May into June.”
Lori Nezhura Deputy Director of Planning, Preparedness and Prevention from the State Office of Emergency Services and Co-Chair of the state’s COVID-19 Vaccine Task Force said Blue Shield, the state’s third-party administrator, is preparing the state for an increase in vaccine distribution.
“Blue Shield is working hard to ensure that all across the state we’re putting infrastructure in place so when that vaccine does increase, we can put it in arms right away,” Nezhura said. “They’re doing this through several different avenues of efforts; one is creating a statewide network of providers, the other is citing geographically diverse mega sites and they’re also bringing on additional mobile providers.”
Blue Shield is putting the entire state on a single system, Nezhura said.
UCLA infectious disease expert Dr. Timothy Brewer pointed out that while cases have dropped across the state, Northern California has experienced higher positivity rates in some rural counties than densely populated Southern California counties.
“Our test positivity rate is running about 2.3%. In Los Angeles County, that was up around 20% at the peak. Now it’s closer to 2.0% positivity,” Brewer said. “We’re doing much better than we were two short months ago. That having been said, in the northern counties like Humboldt County you’re running at about 2.9% and Sonoma County is at about 2.4% test positivity. While you’re better off than you were in January, you are lagging a little bit behind the rest of the state.”
Brewer reiterated the need for people to continue taking basic precautions to reduce the spread of COVID-19 such as masking, remaining social distant and hand washing.
“And if you’re eligible to get a vaccine, please don’t wait, go get vaccinated regardless of which vaccine it is,” he added.
Many of the questions fielded during the town hall revolved around relaxed restrictions for fully vaccinated individuals.
According to guidance issued by the Centers for Disease Control earlier this month, people are considered fully vaccinated two weeks after their second dose for Pfizer BioNTech or Moderna and two weeks after a single-dose vaccine, such as Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine. A person is not fully protected if it has been less than two weeks since their final vaccine.
People who have been fully vaccinated can gather indoors with other fully vaccinated people without wearing a mask and can gather indoors with unvaccinated people from one household — such as relatives who all live together — without masks unless one of those people has an increased risk for severe illness from COVID-19. If a fully vaccinated person is exposed to COVID-19, the CDC said they do not need to quarantine or get tested unless the individual experiences symptoms or lives in a group setting, such as a correctional facility or a group home. Brewer said it is important to continue to avoid crowds, non-essential travel and continue to watch for symptoms of COVID-19 even when fully vaccinated.
“Many people want to know when will we reach herd immunity,” Brewer said. “Herd immunity is when there are enough people in a population who are immune or protected against a disease that when an infectious person comes into the population there are not enough susceptible people to be able to transmit the disease and allow it to spread.”
The COVID-19 model suggests somewhere between 70 and 90% of the population needs immunity for herd immunity to occur, Brewer said.
“You can get that immunity one of two ways: one is to actually have the disease and the other is to be vaccinated. Clearly vaccinated is the way to go,” he said. “From the models, we’re going to probably hit that level somewhere in June or July if we are able to ramp up the vaccinations as President Joe Biden says.”
Brewer likened COVID-19 to September 11, 2001.
“This is a little bit like 9/11, we’re never going to go back to totally what we were before,” he said. “We’re two decades after 9/11 and we still take our shoes off in the airport, so likely we’re going to still be doing some things after we get around that herd immunity like wearing our masks sometimes in public or staying home when we’re sick, even as things get better.”
Hopefully, by July 2022 we won’t have to wear our masks all the time in public, Brewer added.
“For the first time since the beginning of this pandemic, I can finally say that there is a light at the end of the tunnel but we have to remain vigilant, all of us, to ensure that light continues to burn bright,” McGuire said.
A full recording of McGuire’s virtual town hall discussion can be found at sd02.senate.ca.gov.