Cottage Health celebrated a major milestone on May 15 at its Goleta mass vaccination clinic: The site administered its 100,000th dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, about a quarter of the total doses put into arms so far in Santa Barbara County.
As the county continues striving for herd immunity, Public Health Officer Dr. Henning Ansorg commended Cottage for the role it’s played in vaccinating the community. Given the site’s Goleta location, Cottage’s clinic naturally serves mostly South County residents—and Ansorg said that North County residents, for a variety of reasons, aren’t as likely to use a mass vaccination site to get their shots.
North County needs a different approach, and it’s evident in the data: The percentages of people who are either partially or fully vaccinated are notably lower in cities like Santa Maria, Lompoc, and Guadalupe compared to South County cities like Santa Barbara and Carpinteria. The county is moving away from mass vaccination and toward mobile clinics to try and meet people where they’re at, close the inoculation gap between regions, and get closer to herd immunity to COVID-19.
Breaking down the data
When taken as a whole, Santa Barbara County is on par with California for vaccination.
“Sixty-one percent of everybody who is eligible [in Santa Barbara County] to get a vaccine have had at least one dose,” Ansorg said on May 20.
On the same day, according to state data, a little more than 61 percent of Californians had received at least one dose.
But a closer look at Santa Barbara County reveals regional disparities. According to California Health and Human Services data, ZIP codes that cover parts of Casmalia, Lompoc, Santa Maria, New Cuyama, Orcutt, and Guadalupe are among the lowest vaccinated in the county, ranging from 41 to 58 percent of eligible residents having received one or more doses as of May 18. Seventy to 80 percent of residents in ZIP codes that include parts of Santa Barbara, Montecito, and Carpinteria have received one or more doses.
Early on in the vaccine rollout, the state placed ZIP codes into different quartiles based on their Healthy Places Index (HPI) rating, a tool used to see how community conditions shape health outcomes in different areas. California then prioritized vaccine rollout for areas in the first, or most underserved, quartile. The idea was that because first quartile communities have the lowest access to health care, these places needed to be prioritized the most.
In Santa Barbara County, the ZIP codes with the lowest vaccination rates aren’t always those in the lowest quartiles. While the first and second quartile communities have some of the lowest inoculation rates countywide, some North County third quartile ZIP codes like Orcutt (93455) and Casmalia (93429) do too. Meanwhile, South County communities in the third quartile like Santa Barbara (93101, 93103) are among the most vaccinated.
Third quartile communities are places that, according to the HPI, have better health outcomes than average and similar levels of access to health care. But despite being in the same bracket, the South County third quartile ZIP codes have vaccinated a significantly higher proportion of their residents than the North County ones.
In other words, even the healthiest North County communities are lagging behind.
Finding what works
It’s clear from Cottage’s 100,000 dose milestone that the hospital’s Goleta vaccination site has played a significant role in South County’s vaccination success. Due to the site’s location, 92.4 percent of people vaccinated at it so far have been southern and central county residents, according to data that Public Relations Manager Maria Zate shared with the Sun.
Hospital officials said they strove to make the experience as smooth and accessible as possible to encourage local residents to come through.
“We kept hearing really positive feedback from people, that it just went a lot smoother and easier than they thought it would,” Cottage Director of Marketing Bob Behbehanian said. “Our average turnaround time of a car is about 23, 24 minutes, and that includes the 15 minutes that you have to wait.”
Cottage Vice President of Marketing Katy Bazylewicz said the demand for the site among the residents they’re serving remains strong, especially with eligibility now open to those age 12 to 15.
“For every first dose we’re giving out, we have to give out that second dose three weeks later,” Bazylewicz said. “As long as we keep doing these first doses, and with the most recent age drop, we’re seeing a lot of people coming through still. As long as that community need’s there, we’ll be there.”
While North County has also hosted successful large-scale vaccination efforts at Allan Hancock College and the Santa Maria Fairpark, Public Health Officer Ansorg said these approaches haven’t garnered the same interest as Cottage’s—not because of any problems with the sites themselves, but because the demand is lower.
“Nothing compared to Cottage Hospital in the South County. … However, even the so-called high volume vaccination sites that we had, at some point it was fading out,” Ansorg said. “We had less people showing up for appointments or for walk-ups even.”
Ansorg said that North County communities seem to prefer other ways of getting vaccinated—and the county is meeting them there with mobile clinics.
“They like to go to their personal doctor, for instance,” Ansorg said. “Or if they don’t have a doctor, we are going to swap meets, we’re going to farmers’ markets, we’re going to where people go anyway on the weekend.”
Ansorg is confident that these efforts will help close the gap between different geographic areas of the county.
“We make it easier, so they don’t have to make an appointment, they can just walk up,” he said. “I think that will make a difference: to reach out with those mobile teams, mobile clinics, in addition to the pharmacies and the regular hospitals and clinics and so forth.”
Achieving immunity
The medical community is not yet in consensus over what it will take to reach herd immunity to COVID-19. Past viruses and vaccination efforts can give us an idea of what it might take, but Ansorg said it’s “really difficult to achieve.”
“It’s been achieved in other vaccinations like with the measles, for instance, or with polio, to a degree that there’s basically no measles or polio,” Ansorg said. “For measles, that means 95 percent need to be immune. That’s either by vaccination, or by having had the measles before because it gives a lifelong immunity.”
But COVID-19, Ansorg said, is too new of a disease to know how long immunity lasts. Furthermore, it’s not yet clear how much of the population will need to be vaccinated, and how many people would need to have natural immunity to COVID-19, to reach herd immunity.
“There are only estimates of when herd immunity would be reached, and the estimates range anywhere between 80 to 95 percent,” he said. “Then, what we found out is that some people obviously had COVID during the last year sometime, and they therefore develop antibodies and have what we call a natural immunity, that is conferred by having gone through the infection.”
Roughly 10 percent of the population is estimated to have natural immunity right now, Ansorg said. And whether or not someone has had COVID-19, he encourages everyone to get vaccinated, especially as the virus mutates and stronger variants emerge.
“That’s why I always say we’re shooting for 70 percent of folks getting vaccinated,” he said. “Then overall immunity will be higher, at least 80 percent. … We are over 60 percent who have at least one shot, so I think it’s manageable. It’s reachable.”
Reach out to Staff Writer Malea Martin with your story ideas or comments by emailing mmartin@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in May 27 – Jun 3, 2021.
