Voicing frustration at the "inconsistent and unpredictable flow" of COVID-19 vaccine shipments to the city, San Francisco officials warned that its health department would likely run out of doses within the next two days, barring the immediate arrival of additional supplies.
The San Francisco Department of Public Health, among the largest coronavirus vaccine providers in the city, has already administered nearly half of the 31,655 doses it has so far received, a rate "above the national average," Mayor London Breed said at a press briefing on Tuesday.
"All of the DPH remaining vaccine doses are scheduled for individuals to receive their first or their second doses this week. And unless we get more vaccine, DPH will run out of our existing supply by this Thursday," Breed said, noting she was only speaking for the city agency, not the private health care providers also administering the vaccine. "This really shows that while we are making progress, we simply need more vaccines."
DPH is currently charged with vaccinating many of the city's front-line community health care workers, including staff at San Francisco General Hospital and low-income residents 65 and older.
Dr. Grant Colfax, San Francisco's director of public health, said there is a "really unfortunate lack of a reliable supply."
"I will give you an example," he said. "Last week, we got 12,000 vaccines. We were expecting 12,000 this week. And this week we're only getting 1,775."
Colfax attributed the delay to numerous supply and distribution hiccups at the state and federal level. The city, he said, also had to hold off on administering 8,000 doses of a recent tranche of Moderna vaccine doses after a handful of patients in a Southern California clinic experienced severe allergic reactions.
To date, a total of 102,825 doses of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines have been distributed to public and private health care providers in San Francisco, including DPH, officials said. Of those, about 28,500 doses — under 28% of the total supply — have been administered.
About 210,000 people in San Francisco are included in Tier 1A, the first group in line in the state's vaccine distribution plan.
Breed and Colfax both expressed confidence the city would soon receive larger, more frequent shipments under the incoming Biden administration. The city, they said, is still planning to open its first mass vaccination site later this week at City College of San Francisco. It also just launched a vaccine data dashboard and a new sign-up tool that notifies residents when they are eligible to receive the vaccine.
Despite the dearth of supply, Colfax said, some hopeful signs for the waning of the surge have emerged, with case rates and hospitalizations starting to drop.
"The trend is currently in a positive direction," he said. "But again, we will only get there if people continue to maintain the prevention precautions that we know work to slow the spread of the disease."
Echoing Breed's appeal ahead of tomorrow's presidential inauguration ceremonies, he urged residents to avoid large gatherings.
"This is no time to let down our guard," he said.