Sonoma County congressmen promise sharp increase in COVID-19 vaccine doses coming soon

Sonoma County’s congressmen Monday assured local residents big waves of coronavirus vaccines would be arriving in the coming weeks.

U.S. Reps. Mike Thompson, D-St. Helena, and Jared Huffman, D-San Rafael, said recent steps taken by the Biden administration, including last week’s passage of the $1.9 trillion pandemic relief bill and the deployment of the Defense Production Act, finally will alleviate the scarcity of available vaccine doses in the county, California and across the country.

The county’s vaccination campaign has been crippled by severe shortages of weekly doses since it started in mid-December. For that reason, three months into the ongoing effort only 14.5%, or 59,571, of local residents have received the two required shots of Pfizer and Moderna inoculations or the single Johnson & Johnson shot.

“It’s coming and we will have the transparency and accountability to make sure that three weeks out, on a rolling basis, you’re going to see waves and waves of more vaccine come into Sonoma County,” Huffman said.

Neither he nor Thompson provided any statistics or estimates of upcoming vaccine shipments here to back up their assertions on Monday, during a press briefing with a large group of state, county and local elected leaders.

President Joe Biden said he wanted 100 million shots to go into the arms of Americans in his first 100 days in office, and White House officials said Monday the accelerated vaccine rollout will make it possible to achieve that goal by March 25.

Biden said Friday by May 1 there should be enough COVID-19 vaccine doses to make all adults nationwide eligible for inoculations.

As part of the vaccination blitz, the Biden administration recently helped broker a deal for pharmaceutical arch-rivals Merck & Co. and Johnson & Johnson to work together to produce millions more vaccine doses.

“That doesn’t just happen out of goodwill,” Huffman said.

The confidence and assurances from election officials comes at a time when vaccine supplies in Sonoma County have been flat for weeks, averaging a little more than 7,700 doses the past three weeks. This week, the county is expected to receive a slight uptick in supply, about 8,600 doses, with the majority of that going to residents’ second shots, said Dr. Sundari Mase, the county’s health officer. To date, 66,662 residents have received a single shot and await a second.

Because of that, efforts to expand vaccinations in the county’s most disadvantaged neighborhoods have been effectively stalled, Mase said.

Specifically, only 16% of Latino residents, who comprise 27% of the local population, have been vaccinated. That number did reach a high of 17% in recent weeks, following slow progress in mid-February when the county partnered with area health clinics to inoculate farm workers and other employees deemed essential such as restaurant and grocer employees.

“That's just not good enough, so we're going to continue to push to make sure that we administer vaccines to those communities most disproportionately impacted by COVID-19,” said Lynda Hopkins, chair of the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors.

County officials are asking health insurer Blue Shield, the state’s third-party administrator in charge of managing and distributing vaccines in California, to ensure that the county’s disadvantaged communities are given proper priority for shots.

Mase also said that as of Monday anyone at least age 16 with physical disabilities or underlying medical conditions is eligible to receive the vaccine, but tight supply will limit vaccination availability.

When the county on Feb. 19 announced its biggest expansion of vaccination eligibility by opening it to residents 65 to 69, nearly 34,000 more locals became eligible for shots. Almost a month later, only 7,211 people in that age group have gotten both shots in their arms — another indicator of the vaccine shortage plaguing the county.

Along with setting high expectations for future vaccine shipments, the group of elected leaders at Monday’s press briefing congratulated Sonoma County for exiting the most restrictive purple tier of the state’s four-stage community reopening plan for California’s 58 counties.

The move on Sunday allowed the county to advance to the less restrictive red tier, after being stuck in purple since the state unveiled its reopening plan in late August. The action allowed restaurants to resume indoor dining and movie theaters to screen movies indoors, both at 25% customer capacity. Gyms could reopen inside at 10% capacity, some stores already allowed to operate indoors could increase capacity to 50% and grocery stores could expand to full capacity. The move also paved the way for schools to resume in-person instruction.

A key question Monday was how long would it take the county to now advance from the red to the orange tier, which carries even fewer limitations on businesses and public life. As of Monday, there were only three counties statewide in the orange reopening stage, while 33 were in red and 21 still stuck in purple.

“It’s about getting that case rate of ours down,” Mase said, noting it’s difficult to predict when the county would move ahead to the orange tier. “More testing will help us. We’ll find more cases, get them isolated, do contact tracing, quarantine contacts and test them and, simultaneously, a better (case) adjustment factor.”

Although new local coronavirus infections, hospitalizations and deaths are in decline, the key viral transmission rate remains too high for the state’s orange reopening stage. The county’s transmission rate Monday was 6.8 new daily cases per 100,000 residents, the lowest its been in nine months, Mase said.

It needs to drop all the way to 3.9 new daily cases per 100,000 people for the county to qualify to advance to the orange tier and be able to further reopen businesses. Already, the county’s overall COVID-19 test positivity and test positivity rates in poor neighborhoods meet the state’s minimum thresholds for the next less restrictive tier.

A stark reminder the virus is still deadly, county officials reported Monday that two more local residents have died of COVID-19 complications, bringing the pandemic death toll to 308. One victim was a man between 65 and 70 who died died March 6, and the other was a man between 60 to 65 who died the next day.

Public health and elected officials urged local residents to continue measures to prevent the spread of the virus, including social distancing, wearing a mask and washing hands.

“We’ve come a long way, but it’s really important that we remain vigilant and we continue to take all the protective measures to get us through this terrible COVID-19 pandemic and get us fully back on track,” congressman Thompson said.

You can reach Staff Writer Martin Espinoza at 707-521-5213 or martin.espinoza@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @pressreno.