State takes control of the vaccine roll-out

Frustrated by the sluggish pace of California’s COVID-19 vaccine program, state officials are taking charge with a streamlined new system they say will deliver shots to residents more quickly than the fractured and localized model they have now.

They’ll need to pick up the pace. President Joe Biden said Tuesday his new administration is ramping up delivery of vaccines to states by as much as 16 percent next week. Biden said the administration has purchased enough doses from manufacturers to have 300 million Americans vaccinated

by the end of the summer or early fall.

California’s new system, announced Tuesday, aims to centralize vaccine distribution at the state level, where a new team will work with providers to send out doses and better track how quickly they get into arms, according to Gov. Gavin Newsom and other state leaders. The goal is to make the distribution more efficient and to see in real time how the different providers are doing in reaching out to their communities and making sure people get access to shots. The state is promising to ensure that lowincome and communities of color have priority access to the vaccine.

“We don’t want to have equity and speed at odds with each other,” said Dr. Mark Ghaly, the state’s secretary of Health and Human Services.

The new plan seems to tacitly acknowledge what has become clear as rankings show California near the bottom of states nationwide in distributing vaccines: The existing system is not working.

“We’re building a statewide vaccine administration network,” said Yolanda Richardson, the secretary of California’s Government Operations Agency, who has been tapped with running the new distribution effort. “This is about California being prepared, to make sure we can get out the vaccine when more supply is available.”

State and local officials have complained for weeks about the insufficient and unreliable supply of vaccines coming from the federal government, which they say has hampered their ability to distribute doses and plan vaccination events.

Biden, who held a conference call with governors on vaccine distribution Tuesday, said he heard that complaint loud and clear. He promised the federal government would allocate a minimum of 10.1 million doses to states next week, up from 8.6 million this week. He also pledged to provide three-week forecasts, showing states how much vaccine they can expect to receive, to improve planning.