90k Vaccinations Could Be Canceled In NorCal Amid Dosage Deficit

BAY AREA, CA — A health care giant in Nothern California may have to cancel or reschedule more than 90,000 second dose coronavirus vaccine appointments because of a supply shortage, a spokesperson for Sutter Health told Patch on Tuesday.

Sutter Health blamed a statewide supply crisis and said it may have to contact tens of thousands of patients over the next week to reschedule appointments for second doses.

"This is an extremely unfortunate situation for our patients, and one that is avoidable if we can get additional vaccine supply," the company told Patch.

In early February, Sutter Health — which serves large portions of the Bay Area and Sacramento region — paused all new first-dose appointments and later had to postpone first dose appointments through early March "indefinitely."

The company said it is currently in the process of contacting patients with second dose appointments scheduled through March 9 to let them know their current appointment needs to be canceled. "We will work to reschedule them in order of their appointment to minimize further delay," a spokesperson said.

The spokesperson — who spoke to Patch under the condition of anonymity — said the company has urgently pressed the state for more doses to avoid canceling a potential 90,000 appointments — and the company is not alone.

The lack of supply has plagued nearly every inch of the state for the past several weeks, despite efforts by Gov. Gavin Newsom and Blue Shield to revamp California's bedeviled vaccine rollout.

All six city-run vaccination centers in Los Angeles faced closure in late February because of the dosage deficit.

San Francisco was forced to pause its vaccine rollout in mid-February, and officials closed Moscone Center for two weeks after running out of doses, ABC7 reported.

And in January, Kaiser Permanente canceled more than 5,200 vaccination appointments in Santa Clara County, causing mass confusion among the southern Bay Area's most vulnerable residents, the San Jose Spotlight reported.

Vaccination centers have been ramping up staffing and the ability to accommodate eligible residents all around the state, but administrators at these sites have essentially had their hands tied amid the ongoing shortage.

"Sites all across the state of California are toggling back based upon limited supply," Newsom said in late February. "That's a manufacturing issue. Manufactured supply in the United States of America is limited."

Officials warned last month that March would be challenging.

The state has received more and more doses from the federal government each week, and vaccines are arriving as the state continues to widen its eligibility pool to essential workers such as teachers, food service workers, farmworkers, law enforcement and so on.

To date, Sutter Health has received more than 369,000 doses from state and county allocations. Of those doses, some 347,000 have been administered to residents 65 and older as well as to health care workers in Northern California.

To get this done, Sutter Health said it rapidly scaled its ability to administer more than 25,000 shots a day. "Our ability to vaccinate has always been — and remains — dependent on vaccine supply from the state,” the company said.

In Santa Clara County — where one of the state's mass vaccination sites, Levi's Stadium, is located — officials set a goal to vaccinate 85 percent of its eligible population by midsummer.

"Reaching our goal, of course, depends very much on the vaccine supply, and that’s a part of the equation over which we do not have control," Dr. Sara Cody, the county's public health officer, said Tuesday.

President Joe Biden upped the ante on Tuesday, announcing that there would be enough vaccines for every adult in the United States by the end of May — a major acceleration of the vaccine timeline that's been presented thus far.

Biden did not guarantee that those doses would all be administered by the end of May, but he and Newsom have both said that the supply would start to ramp up in the coming months.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration authorized the single-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine Saturday, which could pave the way for California to get about 1.1 million of its doses in the next month, Newsom said last week. The governor said some 380,000 J&J doses could arrive in California this week.

Sutter Health could not confirm whether there has been any talk of receiving the new single-dose vaccine in Northern California anytime soon.

"I'm very confident with [Johnson & Johnson], at the end of March, April, we're going to start seeing things really ramp up," Newsom said last month. "May, June, July: game changer. All of a sudden we're at a completely different level."

Read more about coronavirus and vaccines from Patch California:

• 7 CA Counties Move Into Red Tier, Making Way For More Reopenings
  
• CA's Vaccine Rollout Is Revamped Again: What To Know
  
• Back To School: CA Lawmakers Reach Deal For In-Class Instruction
  
• CA Could Get 1.1M Johnson & Johnson Vaccines In The Next 3 Weeks
  
• How To Get The Coronavirus Vaccine In California
  
• When Will CA's Coronavirus Vaccine Supply Improve?
  
• 5 CA Variant, Vaccine Questions: What You Need To Know