Sonoma County hits vaccine milestones with 400,000 doses administered

More than 400,000 doses of three coronavirus vaccines have been administered to date in Sonoma County, where 60% of the eligible population has been at least partly immunized against the deadly contagion, county officials said this week.

The new benchmark comes despite a long line of operational setbacks that have hampered the campaign at various stages, including supply shortages and confusion over how to make appointments.

Now, a different stage of the rocky drive has begun as the county focuses on a younger and wider share of the population whose inoculation will be critical to achieve herd immunity from COVID-19.

Donna Waldman, executive director of Jewish Community Free Clinic in Santa Rosa, wants to see 90% of Sonoma County vaccinated. She is impressed by the proportion already covered with at least one dose.

“But I do worry,” Waldman said, “Where are the other 30%? And I don’t really know where they are.”

Still, Waldman marvels at the progress. Just a few weeks ago, she said, Jewish Community Free Clinic’s waiting list for vaccination appointments was hundreds of names long. Now it has no waiting list. (In fact, Waldman said Wednesday, there are times available Saturday.) The clinic is filling every slot, but must make a few calls to make it happen.

“I was thinking about it, and I remember a meeting at the beginning of the rollout where I calculated we’d need to get through November to be deep into it,” Waldman said. “Now it’s April. How did that happen?”

Sometime this week, the number of vaccinations administered in the county is expected to surpass the total number of eligible residents, estimated at 411,096. That figure ballooned last week, when the state of California opened eligibility to everyone 16 and older.

As of Tuesday, almost 168,000 county residents had been fully vaccinated with two doses of Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna, or one dose of Johnson & Johnson. Among those 75 and older, the rate of full vaccination is a robust 74%.

According to the Los Angeles Times’ tracker, Sonoma ranks 11th among the state’s 58 counties in percentage of the population having received at least one dose and eighth in percentage fully vaccinated.

“I think we’ve done an amazing effort in a relatively short period of time,” said Susannah Labbe, medical director at Alliance Medical Center, which has executed about 16,500 coronavirus vaccinations since the program began in mid-December. “Our primary guiding focus all along has been on equity in distribution, but it hasn’t slowed efficiency of putting shots in arms. I think we’ve shown we can do both.”

There have been stumbles along the way. A misalignment between the county’s age eligibility requirements and those of the state, compounded by an improperly shared access code, resulted in the county canceling about 9,000 vaccination appointments in late January. The site of that disruption, a clinic in Rohnert Park run by OptumServe, continued to be plagued by additional appointment hitches in the weeks after.

At times, residents have expressed exasperation in the county’s transparency, messaging and data presentation in the area of vaccinations.

“I was as frustrated as anybody,” Supervisor Chris Coursey said. “I’m over 65. The state opened up over 65 and older before the county. I made myself be patient. But I could understand why people were frustrated. The oldest people in our community were dying at the highest rates, but they were not first in line for vaccinations.”

Vaccination rates have climbed since then, and people’s anxiety has quieted. Supply issues haven’t gone away — the county’s public health division received an exceptionally low number of doses this week, resulting in county-supported clinics having to limit their Pfizer-BioNTech injections to second doses, according to site coordinator Ken Tasseff. But other providers like pharmacy chains and hospitals are getting more.

The situation has improved dramatically on myturn.ca.gov, the state’s central portal for COVID vaccine appointments. Wednesday, upcoming slots were available to Sonoma County residents at several sites.

But there are additional holes to plug. With coronavirus variants changing the calculation, most epidemiologists now believe a community needs at least 75-80% of its population vaccinated to reach herd immunity. And with the economy continuing to reopen and weary residents relaxing safety standards, there is the potential for greater exposure until that happens.

So the focus turns now to reaching those who, while eligible, have not yet gotten a shot. That includes people who live in geographic or social isolation, and are less likely to hear the county’s pleas to sign up, or less able to facilitate an appointment.

For Alliance Medical, which has concentrated on underserved communities, that means getting around technology barriers and meeting clients where they’re at, Labbe said.

“One thing we learned really quickly was that we couldn’t just send out a link and expect them to show up,” she said. “That wasn’t culturally responsive, and it wasn’t effective. A lot of people don’t have digital access or digital capability. The system we had in place to provide vaccine put the folks we want to reach at the back of the line. We had to make sure we kept them at the front of the line.”

Alliance has brought on community health workers during the pandemic, to go into grocery stores and other central gathering points. And the center has strengthened its relationship with Corazon Healdsburg, a grassroots organization with deep ties to the Latino population. Waldman also cites the assistance Jewish Community Free Clinic gets from community partners such as the CURA Project, the Graton Day Labor Center and the Sonoma County Farm Bureau.

Language and resources aren’t the only issues. To get to Waldman’s 90%, the county may need to make inroads among people with vaccine hesitancy, a steady fraction of the population that includes political outliers, immigrants, those mistrustful of government and entrenched anti-vaxxers.

“At first it was, ‘How do we get the hard-to-reach people?’” Waldman said. “And we’ve been getting that done. Now it will be the hard-to-convince people.”

Part of the challenge is trying to get there before June 15, when Gov. Gavin Newsom plans to shelve California’s Blueprint for a Safer Economy and fully reopen, assuming hospitalizations remain low and residents continue to get vaccinated. That return to many pre-pandemic conditions will make local decision makers a lot more comfortable if 80-90% of the population is vaccinated.

“We have to keep doing this,” Coursey said. “We’re not to herd immunity numbers yet. Variant issues are still out there. And who knows where the next problem is? Things have rarely stayed the same over the last year.”

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