CA's Vaccine Rollout Is Revamped Again: What To Know

CALIFORNIA — Blue Shield officially took the reins of the state's muddled vaccine rollout Monday. By the end of the month, eligibility criteria for the vaccine will be leveled across all of the Golden State's 58 counties.

The insurer was tasked with managing the state's new vaccine network following mass confusion and frustration spurred by previous decisions to allow counties discretion for setting vaccine eligibility.

Going forward, Blue Shield will make recommendations on how many doses each county will get and who will get them based on benchmarks set by the state.

California officials will make the final call on the allocation of first doses to each county and which populations will be eligible for them.

Currently, 70 percent of doses are slated for those 65 and older, and the other 30 percent are set aside for educators, child care staff, first responders, food workers and farmworkers.

Second doses will be sent to the providers who administered the first doses, state officials said.

The allocation will continually evolve to meet hard-to-reach populations and to reflect newly eligible residents, officials said.

The new plan will take a while to implement fully, which is why it will be put in place in "waves."

The state on Monday began the first wave with 10 counties: Fresno, Imperial, Kern, Kings, Madera, Merced, Riverside, San Joaquin, Stanislaus and Tulare.

Beginning Sunday, Blue Shield will add the rest of the state's counties until it has caught up by March 31. The most populous and affected counties — including Los Angeles, San Diego, Orange and San Bernardino — will be included in the second wave. Many Bay Area counties will make up the third wave.

Eventually, residents in each county will be able to make an appointment to get vaccinated only through the state's scheduling website, MyTurn, or on its phone line, 833-422-4255.

Under Blue Shield's leadership, the state is now on track to "create the capacity" to administer 3 million vaccinations weekly, beginning this week, officials said.

As the state continues to grapple with a vaccine supply crisis, a new arrow in the state's vaccine quiver could materialize as early as this week. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration authorized the use of Johnson & Johnson's single-dose vaccine on Saturday. On Friday, Newsom said the state could get 380,300 doses of the new vaccine sometime this week and for the next several weeks, eventually bringing some 1.1 million doses to California.

There are several benefits that make the Johnson & Johnson vaccine more accessible than those from Moderna or Pfizer. The new product does not require ultra-cold storage, and it consists of only a single shot, Newsom said Friday.

The state has been administering about 1.4 million vaccines weekly, but officials aim to bring that up to 4 million per week by the end of April.

The state has administered 9.1 million vaccine doses to Californians, Newsom said Monday. As cases continue to fall, the state's seven-day positivity rate has plummeted to 2.3 percent.

"Things are moving in the right direction. Things seem to be stabilizing," Newsom said Monday, noting that numbers seem to be plateauing.

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