Vaccines will be available to everyone in less than 6 weeks

Move would throw vaccine eligibility open to 32M

In the first indication that California will adopt President Joe Biden’s call for everyone to be eligible for the COVID-19 vaccine by May 1, Gov. Gavin Newsom said Friday the state was moving toward getting rid of restrictions on which residents can get inoculated.

“We anticipate within five and a half weeks (being) where we can eliminate all tiering, so to speak, and make available vaccines to everyone across the spectrum,” Newsom said during a stop in San Francisco. “Supply will exponentially increase, so in a few weeks these issues will substantively be addressed.”

A spokesperson for the state’s public health department told the Bay Area News Group the state likely would release more details next week.

The move would follow several other states and throw open vaccine eligibility to more than 32 million Californians — including more than 5 million in the five-county Bay Area — but in turn put more pressure on a distribution system plagued by delays, supply shortages and bureaucratic squabbles.

The aggressive push to ramp up vaccines comes as the number of new coronavirus cases in California has dropped dramatically in recent weeks to levels not seen in nearly a year.

The seven-day new case average is about 2,830, lower than it’s been since the Golden State’s first significant spike in early June and far below late December, when the average skyrocketed to north of 45,000. Across the U.S., states have posted similarly rosy data.

The declining case rate has prompted counties across California to begin to allow more shops and businesses to reopen, and vaccinated people are beginning to feel more comfortable gathering and leaving their homes.

In Alameda County, the seven-day average case rate has dropped into the 80s, reaching a level not seen since October, and before that, June. In Contra Costa County, cases have followed a similar pattern, with the average dropping into the 90s. With the exception of a blip in June, San Francisco County’s rate — in the 20s — is lower than ever. San Mateo County’s rate has reached the 30s. In Santa Clara County, the average is around 120, slightly above where it was during the fall.

But some places, including in California, have seen case rates plateau. The Atlantic’s COVID Tracking Project on Thursday noted

that Michigan has seen a reversal of earlier declines, with both cases and hospitalizations now rising there. Hospitalizations have increased 45% from February, countering earlier optimism that even if case counts rose, the vaccine rollout might help keep patients out of the hospital. The shots are effective at preventing death and hospitalization, but as in California, most people in Michigan still haven’t been inoculated.

“I think what Michigan tells us is we’re not out of the woods,” said UCSF epidemiologist George Rutherford. “We have these variants circulating, we have behaviors changing, certain parts of the country being immunized less than others, and it’s a set up for these things to happen.”

The Great Lakes State, according to the tracking project, also has the second-most confirmed cases in the U.S. of the B.1.1.7, or UK, variant of the original virus. The variant spreads more easily, and research suggests it may be more deadly, which may be contributing to the alarming jump in cases and hospitalizations. The variant, along with several others, is increasingly a concern in California, too. Recently, a new case of a South African variant that may be more resistant to some vaccines surfaced in Santa Clara County. It’s not the first case in the area, but it is doubly concerning because it is believed to be the first case here from community transmission, not travel.

“We don’t know what path this Michigan outbreak is going to take, but this could prove a bellwether for what happens when new variants of concern encounter populations with less vaccine access,” the tracking project noted on Twitter.

The urgency is clear, but California’s vaccine rollout

has been sluggish. A spokesperson for the California Department of Public Health said the state is expecting to get about 1.8 million doses of vaccine each week for the next several weeks — in line with past allotments even as the number of people eligible to be vaccinated expanded by at least 4 million Monday to include people with certain disabilities and health conditions. Santa Clara County this week canceled thousands of vaccine appointments, citing a supply shortage. Other providers, including Sutter and Kaiser, have also canceled appointments in the last couple of months.

Even as vaccine supply remains tight, the Biden administration has said that by the start of May, states should allow everyone 16 and up to sign up for a vaccine appointment. Officials say they expect supply to go up significantly in April, and the Biden administration said Friday it expects to have enough vaccine for every adult by the end of May.

But a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention examining how well states have done when it comes to getting shots into arms in the communities that have been hardest hit by the deadly virus names California as the fifth worst state. The data the report relied on predated the state’s decision to set aside 40% of its vaccine for high-risk communities — a plan that generated pushback from Bay Area leaders because it largely targeted communities in the Central Valley and Southern California.

The report, Newsom said, “highlighted why we did it.”