Santa Barbara County still lacks enough COVID-19 vaccine doses to cover the most vulnerable community members, and officials say public health departments will soon be mostly out of the distribution picture.
“By mid-February, there will be a new statewide vaccination distribution standard,” Public Health Director Dr. Van Do-Reynoso said at a Jan. 28 vaccine town hall. “Vaccines will be distributed by a third-party administrator, Blue Shield.”
Do-Reynoso said public health departments will still play a role in reaching out to vulnerable populations—such as people experiencing homelessness or undocumented community members—to make sure vaccines reach them when it’s their turn. But Blue Shield of California will become the centralized middleman that allocates vaccine doses to pharmacies, clinic systems, hospitals, and community health centers.
The county recently began allocating a larger chunk of its vaccines to hospitals and major health centers, Do-Reynoso added, since these institutions will play a key role in distribution once the switch-over occurs in February. Marian Regional Medical Center announced on Jan. 29 that it is now providing COVID-19 vaccinations to Santa Barbara County residents aged 75 and older by appointment.
U.S. Rep. Salud Carbajal (D-Santa Barbara), who was present at the town hall, said that while the Biden administration is making moves to ramp up vaccine distribution, “there is still a lot of work to do at the federal level to get these vaccines out to the states and local communities.” He asked about how the county is doing with administering second doses, noting that he has heard “enormous confusion” from some constituents who are due for their second doses.
Do-Reynoso said the county is facing a deficit of second doses because “the state did allow us to use 50 percent of what was reserved for second doses toward the first.”
“The second doses are now becoming due for a larger and larger number of persons, and with a relatively low supply of vaccine, at some point more vaccine is needed to complete the series, and also to begin new vaccinations for new people in the community,” she said.
Carbajal said the Trump administration “made some statements of the availability of the vaccine quantities” that weren’t entirely accurate.
“Now it’s rippling down to our local communities of these challenges of having availability of vaccines in the second [dose],” he said.
Meanwhile, the county continues to lack enough doses to open up vaccination to community members aged 65 and up, despite the state proclaiming this group as eligible.
“We are ready, our infrastructure is ready, and so are our partners,” Do-Reynoso said. “The limitation is that we simply don’t have enough vaccines even for the most vulnerable population in our community. … Santa Barbara County is given an allocation based on our population and demographics. I know that other jurisdictions are also struggling with having enough vaccines for their vulnerable populations as well.”
Like Carbajal, Do-Reynoso is hopeful that the new federal administration will close the gap that Santa Barbara County is facing.
“I am hopeful that in anywhere from three to four weeks, we are going to see a surge in vaccine availability,” she said. “That’s also the same time frame that the state will shift to the new framework as well, and I believe one of the cornerstones of the new framework is that we as a state will move forward together under the new third-party administrators.”
This article appears in Feb 4-11, 2021.
