Santa Clara County to end COVID plan

Nearly three years after it became the first county in the nation to declare COVID-19 a public health emergency, Santa Clara County announced Wednesday a plan to transition out of the emergency phase of the pandemic by the end of February.

That includes the closure of all the county-run mass vaccination and testing sites. County residents will be directed instead to private health care providers, pharmacies or local non-profit clinics.

“We are still in the middle of a pandemic, but we are transitioning from a full-blown response where we have a sense of urgency every day to one where we are adapting to living with COVID,” Dr. Sara Cody, the county's health officer, said at a Wednesday briefing.

Santa Clara was among the first counties in the U.S. to mount a substantial response to the spread of the novel coronavirus after a resident, who had returned from a trip to Wuhan, China, on Jan. 24, 2020, became the first person in the Bay Area to test positive for the virus.

The first known U.S. death from the disease — a 57-year-old woman — also occurred in Santa Clara County on Feb. 6 of that year. The county declared its health emergency on Feb. 10.

Cody, one of the leading health officers in the region and generally the most restrictive in her orders, helped the county establish several mass vaccination sites that served as examples for other parts of the U.S.

About 33% of all vaccinations in Santa Clara County — 1.9 million shots — were administered by public health services since the shots were authorized in December 2020. Dr. Jeff Smith, the county executive, said the effort cost $1 billion.

At the pandemic's peak, Santa Clara County operated one of the biggest vaccination sites in the nation at Levi's Stadium. The site served about 14,000 patients per day, according to Jennifer Tong, the associate chief medical officer at Santa Clara Valley Medical Center.

“We saved thousands of lives in this county by being on top of the pandemic right away and getting everyone vaccinated,” Smith said. “This is not the end of the pandemic. As a matter of fact, we're still vigorously in it, but because we have had such success with vaccinations, we feel like we can back off mass vaccinations at this point.”

At least 85% of all Santa Clara County residents have received one dose of the vaccine as of Wednesday, with 75% receiving two doses. But only 32% of eligible residents have received the updated bivalent booster formulated to fight off the dominant omicron subvariants of the coronavirus.

“It is still incredibly important for everybody to get a bivalent booster if you have not,” Cody said.

She noted that they have until the end of the month to take advantage of the county vaccination sites.

Those include locations at the Santa Clara County Fairgrounds, the animal shelter in San Martin and San Antonio Shopping Center in Mountain View. Many of the county's smaller testing sites will also close in the coming weeks.

After Feb. 28, residents must turn elsewhere.