Safeway pharmacies add to Sonoma County’s vaccine capacity

In the largest one-day expansion of Sonoma County’s network of coronavirus vaccination clinics, 11 new immunization sites opened Monday in local Safeway pharmacies.

The county widened its campaign against the virus on a second front as well, making people 70 and above eligible for doses for the first time. Previously, the county had restricted its supply of vaccine to people 75 or older since it began immunizing the general public on Jan. 27, although some hospitals and private clinics have been vaccinating even younger members of their health networks using their own allotments.

With two other, larger clinics slated to launch in Windsor and Petaluma later in the week, the county is poised to significantly bulk up its program to vaccinate every consenting adult against a scourge that has claimed at least 277 lives and infected nearly 27,000 people in Sonoma County.

“We are having success,” county Supervisor Susan Gorin said. “We are opening more distribution sites. Look at how many people we have vaccinated. And we are lowering the age of eligibility, and doing that very successfully. But patience is the key.”

The Safeway expansion is a major step for the county, taking the vaccination drive out of hospitals and mass sites and into neighborhood supermarkets. The 11 participating Safeways include four in Santa Rosa and one each in Sebastopol, Rohnert Park, Windsor, Guerneville, Healdsburg, Petaluma and Sonoma. Each is able to administer 20 doses of Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna vaccine per day.

As with virtually every step of the vaccination effort, though, this newest expansion has been accompanied by confusion. Safeway’s limited appointment times disappeared so fast that many county residents were left believing the sign-in website wasn’t operational. As of late Monday afternoon, those who hadn’t been fortunate enough to book already were staring at an appointment calendar bereft of a single available slot.

This doesn’t appear to be a local problem. No future appointments were available Monday afternoon within a 50-mile radius of randomly selected ZIP codes in Sacramento, San Francisco, Fresno, Los Angeles and San Diego on the Albertsons COVID-19 vaccine website, created by Safeway’s corporate owner.

Sonoma County vaccine chief Dr. Urmila Shende and vaccine coordinator Ken Tasseff saw the same landscape when they scouted the Safeway site Friday and Saturday. By Saturday afternoon, Shende said, everything was booked solid.

“We realized this reflects the desire, the demand and the interest out there, the anxiety, everybody feels about being able to get a vaccine,” Shende said.

She added that the county will inquire about increasing capacity at some of the Safeway pharmacies. “But this is the reality of our situation, that we have limited vaccine supply and we have a significant population that is eligible for it,” Shende said. “We are trying. But the math is just against us.”

A Safeway representative said checking the website remains the best way to get an appointment through the company, rather than calling local pharmacies.

“New appointments are added to the online scheduler as more vaccine becomes available,” she said in an email. “Demand is high and appointments are often claimed very quickly, and we ask the public to remain patient. As dose allocations increase, so too will the opportunity to secure an appointment.”

Even those able to secure Safeway appointments have found the process puzzling. That includes Susan Herman, who is 72 and lives in Petaluma. On Friday, before the crush, she successfully booked a first dose with Safeway. She received a link and a waiver form and, later, a secure email requiring an access code that had to be used within an hour. The code she had been provided didn’t work.

Unable to reach Safeway customer service, Herman called the local pharmacy directly. After several transfers and 30 minutes on hold, the pharmacist told Herman she did not have an appointment.

“He then suggested I return to their dysfunctional site to reschedule, telling me there are still vaccines left,” Herman said.

In addition to the new Safeway locations, the county is planning to open a vaccination clinic at Santa Rosa Junior College’s Petaluma campus on Tuesday, and another at Huerta Gym in Windsor on Wednesday. The first will be managed by Petaluma Health Center, the second by Alliance Medical Center. Each of those sites will have a capacity of 300 doses per day. Also, CVS Health will start administering public vaccines at the CVS pharmacy in Sonoma on Thursday.

By the end of the week, Sonoma County should have 19 clinics approved and overseen by county officials, including existing sites in Cloverdale, Guerneville and Sebastopol, and at Grace Pavilion and Oakmont Village in Santa Rosa. All of them are managed by third parties. Tasseff said the cumulative capacity is at least 2,000 doses per day.

Gorin said an additional clinic will open in Sonoma next week, at the Veterans Memorial Hall.

Those sites do not include the many vaccine doses administered by the county’s three big hospital systems — Kaiser Permanente, Sutter Health and St. Joseph Health — or by federally qualified health centers.

All of the sites will be open to everyone 70 and older. Monday was the first day the county had used that threshold after originally setting the mark at 75 and up. The OptumServe-run clinic in Rohnert Park continues to be reserved for the 75+ demographic, an indication of the line the county is trying to walk between vaccinating its most vulnerable residents and getting doses out to an anxious public as efficiently as possible.

People 75 and older make up 7.5% of Sonoma County’s population but have accounted for 65% of the COVID-related fatalities here. Whether the cutoff is 75 or 70, the county’s criterion differs from the statewide recommendation of 65, a misalignment that has caused waves of confusion and frustration among seniors attempting to get vaccinated.

As of Monday, 67,745 doses had been administered in the county since mid-December, including 12,277 people who have received each of their two recommended doses.

You can reach Phil Barber at 707-521-5263 or phil.barber@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @Skinny_Post.