Good Samaritan Hospital, one of the largest medical centers in Santa Clara County, is permanently closing its COVID-19 vaccine clinic, claiming that it has vaccinated all of its staff and therefore fulfilled its responsibilities.
The news comes three weeks after the hospital faced backlash for allowing teachers and staff at an affluent Los Gatos school district to skip the line for COVID-19 vaccines by pretending to be health care workers. The story, first reported by the San Jose Spotlight, generated widespread outcry and led to the county withholding future vaccine doses from the hospital.
In an email obtained by the San Jose Spotlight, the hospital's chief medical officer, Klaus Thaler, told staff that state-level changes in vaccine distribution have caused uncertainty about how the hospital's vaccine supply will be impacted.
"Thus, we officially closed our offering of first dose COVID vaccines to our colleagues, medical staff and community," Thaler wrote. "Thank you to all those who took advantage of the hospital's offering to get vaccinated and sincere appreciation for those frontline-team members who helped to operationalized (sic) ... the clinic."
A county spokesperson said officials had been notified of the clinic's closure, and said it shouldn't have a noticeable effect on the vaccine rollout in Santa Clara County. Good Samaritan officials say the focus was only to vaccinate its own health care workers — not the broader community.
"Our focus has always been our health care workers getting vaccinated," said Antonio Castelan, a spokesman for HCA Healthcare, Good Samaritan's parent company. "We are now winding down our vaccination clinic since many of our employees already received their two doses."