Vaccine scarcity forces Sonoma County to cancel appointments

Faced with lingering shortages of the coronavirus vaccine, Sonoma County canceled vaccinations next week for people who had signed up to get their first shots and shut down clinics scheduled to immunize teachers and others who work with children.

Instead, the county will reserve its inadequate supply of the Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines to prioritize second doses for people who received their first shot earlier this month, a vital step that boosts immunity to the virus to roughly 95%.

The erasure of the planned clinics at Rancho Cotate High School in Rohnert Park, which were organized in conjunction with the Sonoma County Office of Education, threatens to reset the clock on the long-delayed return to school for most students in the county.

“It’s very frustrating,” said Dr. Urmila Shende, the county’s vaccine chief. “There’s nothing we can do about it.”

While the county has the infrastructure to deliver upward of 40,000 doses a week, it expects to receive only enough vaccine to administer 7,680 doses next week, roughly the same it got this week but a bit less than the 8,025 doses it received last week, Shende said.

Vaccine supplies could begin to swell next week if federal regulators approve the new Johnson & Johnson vaccine, which requires only a single shot to be effective. The Biden administration has told California it can expect to receive 380,000 Johnson & Johnson vaccines next week, and Gov. Gavin Newsom said he expects the same amount each week for three weeks.

Distribution of the J&J vaccine still is contingent upon federal Food and Drug Administration and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention action, though Newsom said he is confident of the quick approval and availability.

The state, which is currently administering about 1.4 million shots a week because of constrained supplies, announced it would have the capacity to administer 3 million doses a week starting Monday.

Starting Monday, the county-by-county system used to determine eligibility for the vaccine will be replaced with a single statewide standard, the state Department of Health Services announced. All health care providers and local health jurisdictions will move to uniform, state-directed eligibility criteria, eliminating confusion on who is eligible to receive the vaccine.

Confusion over eligibility has plagued the vaccination campaign in Sonoma County, leading to the cancellation of thousands of appointments in late January scheduled by people who qualified under the state standard but did not meet county guidelines.

But the biggest problem today is the supply of vaccine, which simply isn’t meeting public demand for immunizations or even the county’s capacity to deliver shots.

Last week, the national vaccine supply chain was disrupted by severe winter storms blanketing much of the country. Sonoma County health officials confirmed that is no longer an issue. Yet the county’s allocation from the state is stagnant at best lately. And the same is true of other counties, county vaccine site coordinator Ken Tasseff said.

Asked why the allocations are moving backward, Sonoma County Supervisor Lynda Hopkins said, “I think we really need to ask that question of the state of California.”

Representatives of the California Department of Public Health did not respond to a request for comment Friday afternoon.

Frustrated with the county’s dwindling supply of doses, Hopkins wondered aloud if the county had been diminished by Blue Shield, which has been hired by the state as the third-party administrator, or TPA, overseeing its new centralized vaccination appointment and delivery system. Blue Shield is expanding the system in three waves, initially focusing on 10 counties in Central and Southern California. Sonoma and Lake counties are in the second wave of 28 counties that will start transitioning to the new network on Monday, while Marin, Napa and Mendocino counties are in the third wave that will begin merging into the system March 7.

“For a while, we were on a very hopeful trajectory,” Hopkins said. “Then the TPA process began at the state level, the first wave rolled out, it became very clear there was a large focus on those first-wave TPA counties and suddenly our supply was either flat or declining.”

As the Blue Shield program expands, MyTurn.ca.gov will become the main source for Californians to sign up for appointments. Sonoma County residents can currently register to be notified when they become eligible or when appointments open up.

For now, Tasseff said the flow of vaccine is so tight that the county is able to fulfill its existing second-dose appointments only because Kaiser Permanente is “helping us out” with 250 doses.

Tasseff argued that no clinics will be canceled entirely, except those that had been earmarked for educators at Rancho Cotate High. Rather, he said, no additional clinics will be added to the schedule.

But Wendy Young, executive director of Sonoma County Medical Association, said her organization had to cancel Friday’s clinic at the Santa Rosa fairgrounds because of low vaccine inventory.

Other than perhaps a handful of leftover vials that might be applied to first doses, the county is otherwise postponing all such vaccinations next week. Tasseff said he believes all current second-dose appointments will be fulfilled.

The news affects dozens of smaller providers that are tied into the county’s vaccine network.

West County Health Centers has capacity to deliver about 600 doses per day, CEO Jason Cunningham said. The community clinic had wanted to administer 3,600 total next week, split between 1,800 first doses and 1,800 second doses. Instead, WCHC will do only the seconds.

Sonoma Valley Community Health Center, another federally qualified clinic, is expecting to receive 1,270 doses next week, and will apply all of them as second doses, CEO Cheryl Johnson said. Her group isn’t planning to administer any first doses until the week of March 22, she said, and is notifying people currently holding such appointments that they will have to reschedule.

None of the six hospitals in Sonoma County reported canceling vaccination appointments yet, though Sutter Health did acknowledge pausing the scheduling of first doses due to lack of supply, and Providence St. Joseph said it may need to cancel some of the second-dose Moderna appointments at its affiliated medical groups next week.

The snuffed-out SCOE clinics for teachers and other school and child care employees are perhaps most troubling for the wider community, with so many parents counting on open campuses and safe day care centers to relieve their children’s dire need for social interaction and hands-on learning.

Jeff Harding, the retired Healdsburg Unified School District superintendent tasked with overseeing the Office of Education’s vaccination effort, said during a webinar for local educators Friday that the SCOE clinic has the capacity to administer 800 doses a day, and that staff put a total of 1,000 shots into arms there Wednesday and Thursday. The site was closed Friday, and will be shuttered next week, too.

“I was allocated zero. We have no allocation for next week,” Harding said. “We are dark, closed next week and in fact we are closed today, too. It’s somewhat frustrating.”

Harding expressed hope the county can begin offering first doses to teachers again the week of March 8.

Shende said the ongoing vaccine scarcity will not affect any eligibility requirements. The county is currently vaccinating all seniors 65 and older, plus educators and workers in agriculture, food preparation and delivery, and emergency services — supply permitting, of course.

Despite the setbacks, Sonoma County passed something of a hopeful milestone this week. The county now has logged more second doses of vaccine (32,777 as of Thursday) than confirmed cases of coronavirus (27,925).

The Associated Press contributed to this story. You can reach Phil Barber at 707-521-5263 or phil.barber@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @Skinny_Post.