The county's limited supply of Pfizer and Moderna vaccine doses had been previously reserved for the hospital workers and staff and residents of long-term care facilities that make up the first tier of Phase 1A in the state's vaccine prioritization system. Now, everyone in Phase 1A is eligible, in accordance with the state’s announcement earlier this week.
"Anyone who falls in Phase 1A, you can go to your health care provider and get a vaccine," Cody said. "So, Stanford, Palo Alto Medical Foundation, Kaiser and the county hospital system are all ready to vaccinate their patients who are in Phase 1A."
Still, the county doesn't currently have enough vaccines for all those workers. To date, it has received just over 110,000 doses and administered about 47,000 of them, according to Dr. Marty Fenstersheib, the county's testing and vaccine officer. He attributed that lag to the convoluted vaccine distribution process but was optimistic that significantly larger allotments would soon be available.
"So I think it's expected to start slowly and we will absolutely ramp up," he said, noting the number of daily doses administered in the county has increased in recent weeks from several hundred to nearly 6,000. "The plan is to open many more mass-vax sites. "
Fenstersheib stressed, however, that even with the vaccine ramp-up, the county is still mired in the thick of the pandemic, and he urged residents to remain vigilant by continuing to wear masks and following social distancing guidelines. Roughly 1,200 new cases in the county have been reported each day over the last week, straining local hospital capacity, with fewer than 25 intensive care unit beds now available. At least 815 residents have been killed by the virus since March.
The county, Fenstersheib added, is hoping to move into Phase 1B of vaccine distribution by the end of the month, depending on the number of new doses received. That would open the gates to residents 75 and older, as well as some workers in education and child care, emergency services and food and agriculture.
Dr. Cody, the public health director, urged everyone to get the vaccine as more doses become available, regardless of whether they've already had the virus.
"Our big, hairy, audacious goal is to get to 85% herd immunity," she said. "And so, by our calculation, we need to have over one-and-a- half million people in our county vaccinated."
Doing so, she added, will require all health care delivery systems in the county to grow their capacity at "a fairly rapid clip."
"I think that what we've seen so far is promising because our health care systems were able to bring up vaccinations in the middle of responding to the biggest surge we've ever had. And over a holiday."
"That reassures me," she added.
— Matthew Green
