California will soon expand its list of people eligible for coronavirus vaccinations by another 4 to 6 million people, adding people with severe disabilities and people with health conditions that put them at high risk of infection and death, the secretary of office said Friday. State of Health, Dr. Mark Ghaly.
Among those who will become eligible on March 15 are people with certain cancers of the heart, lungs and kidneys, as well as pregnant women, those with Down syndrome, organ transplant recipients and people with severe obesity. It joins people aged 65 and over and those with descriptions of high-risk jobs who were already eligible under the state plan.
California has been plagued by a lack of vaccines, and Ghaly could not say how long it will take for the state to vaccinate about 17 million to 19 million people who will be eligible for the vaccine after the new additions are made.
“Without that crystal ball on allocation it will be very difficult to answer,” he said. The nation’s most populous state can expect to receive more than 1 million doses each week for at least the next few weeks, Ghaly said.
Each of the current vaccines – Pfizer and Moderna – requires two doses for maximum effectiveness. So it takes a million photos to cover 500,000 people.
Judy Mark, president of Disability Voices United, thanked the state for vaccinations for people with disabilities, but said it should be immediate.
“The March 15 entry date may be too late for many people with disabilities who could die of COVID in the meantime,” she said in a statement.
Ghaly said more time was needed for the state to increase capacity. Some people with disabilities or certain health conditions will be harder to reach because they need to be vaccinated at home, he said.
Governor Gavin Newsom said the state recognizes that those with certain physical and intellectual disabilities are “uniquely vulnerable.”
“I want the disabled community to know, I’ve heard you and we’re going to do more and better to provide access, even in the absence,” he said while visiting a mass vaccination site in San Francisco.
California is coming out of the worst stage of the pandemic. New virus cases and hospitalizations have dropped dramatically in the past three weeks, and deaths exceeding 3,500 a week have begun to decline, albeit more slowly.
The state began launching its vaccine in December as cases and hospitalizations exploded. Officials first focused on vaccinating people based on the level of risk in their work. Health workers were first in line, and the state then added educators, agricultural workers and emergency workers. People in long-term care institutions and people over the age of 65 are also eligible.
Once the state goes through these groups, it intends to move to an age-based system, rather than one based on job description. The state has not fully developed a plan for age-based criteria.
“We are working to determine what this age period will be and when that date will be triggered. It will be largely determined by the supply of the vaccine, “said Ghaly.
The state has decided to add people with disabilities and health conditions of any age, after receiving criticism that it fails to protect people at higher risk of COVID-19 infection and death.
However, Dr. Nadine Burke Harris, the California surgeon general, said doctors will have to exercise judgment and not allow everyone to be vaccinated.
“It is really crucial for providers to really exercise a fair amount of limited supply recognition to ensure that those most at risk can get access to the vaccine,” she told KGO-TV on Friday.
This will not be easy for doctors, said Dr. Louise Aronson, a professor of geriatrics at the University of California, San Francisco.
“It will be difficult for patients and it will be difficult for clinicians, but the way we manage to do this is for us all to prioritize the highest risk and stay a little more patient longer, which is one of the the most difficult questions at this point in history, “she said.
California has opened many mass vaccination centers in the past few weeks, but is not operating at full capacity due to a lack of vaccines. The city of Los Angeles temporarily closed vaccination sites at Dodger Stadium and four other locations until supplies could be replenished.
“We’re all frustrated. We know we could do a lot more if we had doses available,” said Dr. Paul Simon, LA’s chief executive. He said the county could administer about 600,000 doses a week, but receives about 200,000.
California has administered 5.5 million doses to date and over 1 million people have received both.
Also on Friday, the state released data showing the age, race, sex and county of people who were vaccinated. It only covers health care workers, long-term care residents and people aged 65 and over, which means it is not an accurate reflection of the entire California population, state officials said.
Incomplete data is just information that officials rely on while trying to distribute vaccines to the most vulnerable people in California. The state did not publish a breakdown of vaccines by zip code, which can be used to measure whether people in disadvantaged neighborhoods are vaccinated, but provided a demographic breakdown of vaccinations by county.
The data show that almost a third of vaccines have reached white people, almost 16% in Latin Americans, more than 13% in Asian Americans and less than 3% in blacks. Of the rest, 14% went to people who identified themselves as multiracial, 12% to those listed as “others”, and the rest to “strangers”. The state relies on self-identification or data from health care providers.
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Associated Press writers Janie Har of San Francisco and Amy Taxin of Orange County contributed.