Vaccine plan left out poor in Bay Area, may get redo
Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office is negotiating changes to a new state plan for inoculating the poorest Californians after local lawmakers complained that it bypassed the Bay Area, legislators involved in the discussions said.
The state’s vaccine distribution plan, set to take effect this week, is supposed to send 40% of the vaccine supply to people living in the state’s poorest ZIP codes. On Friday, The Chronicle posted an analysis of the new plan showing that Bay Area residents represented just 2% of the people in ZIP codes covered by the new system — even though the region represents 20% of California’s population and has many needy people.
“Our phones were blowing up after the media stories about the disproportionate share,” state Sen. Dave Cortese, DSan Jose, told The Chronicle Monday, referring to lawmakers in every Bay Area county. “That inspired us to try to use our positions” to change that.
He and other Bay Area political leaders scheduled a news conference for Monday morning to announce their “urgent request” for Newsom and state officials to rework the plan. Besides Cortese, the Bay Area leaders included Sen. Scott Wiener, DSan Francisco; Sen. Josh Becker, DMenlo Park; Assemblymember Ash
Kalra, DSan Jose; Santa Clara County Supervisor Cindy Chavez; and Morgan Hill Mayor Rich Constantine.
But the lawmakers canceled the announcement at the last minute when state Sen. Mike McGuire, DHealdsburg, told them Newsom’s office was willing to meet. McGuire, Cortese and Wiener participated.
“There’s a commitment from the governor’s office to come back with a fix within 24 hours” with a new proposal, Cortese said in an interview. He added that the meeting didn’t get into specifics about how the plan will change.
“It’s their rollout, and they need to be the ones to make the adjustments. But an inadequate rollout could lead to someone getting hurt or dying. That has been our pitch.”
Newsom’s office did not respond to a request for comment. The governor has said that ZIP codes not on the list will not receive fewer doses, but may receive a smaller portion of increased supplies going forward.
When state officials released the distribution plan last week, they said it would double the number of vaccines for California’s poorest communities while still prioritizing people currently eligible for inoculation: health care workers, people 65 and older, education and child care workers, food and agriculture workers, and emergency services workers.
Newsom’s office has said that the coronavirus infection rate for households making less than $40,000 a year is twice that of families earning at least $120,000 — but the wealthiest people are being vaccinated at nearly double the rate of the poorest residents.
California’s strategy is supposed to allocate 40% of the vaccine supply to 446 of the lowestincome ZIP codes in California.
The Chronicle’s analysis of the plan found that about 10 million people live in the ZIP codes targeted for the additional vaccines. But just 2% of those people live in the ninecounty Bay Area, although those counties compose 20% of the state’s population.
Five Bay Area counties — Santa Clara, San Mateo, Marin, Sonoma and Napa — are excluded from the state’s plan altogether, even though lowincome neighborhoods in those counties have been disproportionately impacted by the pandemic.
The state’s plan includes small percentages of residents in the remaining Bay Area counties: 7% in Alameda County, 4% in San Francisco and 3% in Contra Costa County, according to The Chronicle’s review of public health, census and state finance data.
The formula for determining the 446 ZIP codes relies on the state’s Healthy Places Index, which pulls together dozens of economic and social measures into a single score. The result is heavily weighted toward rural areas, as well as Central and Southern California.