Vulnerable to get 40% of shots
California: Vaccine priority is given to those in the hardest hit neighborhoods, with aim to reopen economy faster, officials say
California will begin setting aside 40% of all vaccine doses for people who live in the most vulnerable neighborhoods in an effort to inoculate people most at risk from the coronavirus and get the state’s economy open more quickly.
The doses will be spread out among 400 ZIP codes with about 8 million people eligible for shots, said Dr. Mark Ghaly, the state’s health and human services secretary. Many of the neighborhoods are concentrated in Los Angeles County and the Central Valley, which have had among the highest rates of infection, but also are found throughout Southern California.
The areas are considered most vulnerable based on metrics such as household income, education level, housing status and access to transportation.
“With vaccines still scarce, we must target vaccines strategically to maximally reduce transmission, protect our health care delivery system and save lives,” Ghaly said in a briefing Thursday.
Currently, people 65 and older, farmworkers, grocery clerks, educators and emergency service workers are eligible for shots in California.
Once 2 million vaccine doses are given out in those neighborhoods, the state will make it easier for counties to move through the four tiers that dictate how open business and public sectors, including schools, should be.
Gov. Gavin Newsom said
in a Thursday news briefing that not only is this the right thing to do, but it's critical to opening up more of the state's economy.
“It is a race against the variants. It's a race against exhaustion. It's a race to safely, thoughtfully open our economy, mindful that it has to be an economy that doesn't leave people behind, that is truly inclusive,” he said, adding that he's also encouraging people to wear two masks.
Right now, a county can move from the most restrictive purple tier to the lower red tier based on several metrics, including having seven or fewer new COVID-19 cases per 100,000 people per day over a period of several weeks.
That metric will change to 10 new cases or fewer. In the red tier, businesses such as restaurants and gyms can open for indoor services at limited capacity.
Los Angeles, Orange, San Bernardino and Riverside counties have seen improvement but remain in the purple tier.
About 1.6 million vaccine doses already have been given to people in those 400 ZIP codes and the state will hit the 2 million mark in the next week or two, officials said.
Once the state gives out 4 million doses in those neighborhoods, it will revise the metrics for getting into the even less restrictive orange and yellow tiers.
“We are going to where we should have started,” Santa Ana Mayor Vicente Sarmiento said about focusing on tamping down the spread of virus in the hardest hit communities first. “If a community is disproportionally impacted, it should receive a proportionate share of the relief effort.
“Those hardest hit by this pandemic are the ones who actually kept our economy and commerce going and benefited a lot of us.”
Setting aside 40% of vaccine supply essentially means that hard-hit ZIP codes will be administering double what they are currently, Ghaly said. Data shows that of shots given, only about 17% were administered in vulnerable communities that have disproportionately been affected by the pandemic.
Double that amount was going to those in the top quarter of what California deems the healthiest communities when measured for education, wages, health care access and transportation, Ghaly said.
“Communities of color are keeping the economy afloat and prioritizing them is not only the right thing to do, but an economic imperative. Vaccinations should go to those who have no choice but continue working every day to keep a roof over their head and food on the table during this devastating pandemic,” Sonja Diaz, director of the UCLA Latino Policy and Politics Initiative, said in a statement. “The state's new approach is the right step to stop the bleeding and affirm that Californians of color are not collateral damage, but the catalysts to recovery.”
Newsom has called equity the state's “North Star.” Yet community health clinics focused on serving low-income and vulnerable Californians say they haven't been getting enough doses.
Ghaly said the administration will work with communities to make sure the vaccine actually ends up in the arms of those patients, not to day-trippers from wealthier ZIP codes who have the time and tech savvy to schedule appointments online.
“Unfortunately, the inequities continue to play out as we continue to vaccinate our communities,” Los Angeles County Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer said. “It's for this reason we need to come up with new partnerships and strategies that make getting vaccinated in our hardest hit communities as accessible and barrier free as possible.”
To that end, Ferrer said the county was making some progress in closing the gaps, but more work was needed.
The effort going forward will rely on more mobile vaccination units to meet people where they live and work. This week, 46 mobile units were deployed throughout the county including at 30 sites in South L.A., Southeast L.A. and Antelope Valley.
Officials are making it easier to move through reopening tiers, arguing the likelihood of widespread transmission that can overwhelm hospitals will decrease as more people are vaccinated. That's particularly true as the most vulnerable populations that are more likely to get seriously ill receive the shots.
While race and ethnicity are not explicit factors in designating vaccinations, the 400 vulnerable ZIP codes overlap heavily with neighborhoods with higher populations of Blacks, Latinos and Asian and Pacific Islanders, officials said.